


Choices

by kriskringle



Category: Newsroom - Fandom
Genre: F/M, non-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:15:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25340749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kriskringle/pseuds/kriskringle
Summary: In which the past casts a pall over the present and MacKenzie and Will face an uncertain future. AU loosely set in Season 1.
Relationships: Will McAvoy/MacKenzie McHale
Comments: 48
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Liz86000](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liz86000/gifts).



_October 2010_

Increasingly, MacKenzie finds herself staring at Will like a lovesick fool. Her first week in New York she’d discovered one of his habits from the old days was still intact—that of lingering at the anchor desk after the broadcast—so she’s taken to cutting the sound from the studio after everyone else has filed out. She likes to watch him, unobserved. There’s a special kind of magic about seeing him without hearing him—something virginal, like newly fallen snow on a winter morning. He’s all mystery and shroud.

Other times, when she knows nothing will require her attention for the next ten seconds during a broadcast, she’ll close her eyes so she can focus on his voice. When he speaks, it both breaks and augments the veil: his voice is sophisticated yet without pretension, his cadence musical but precise. He sounds both careful and incredibly truthful and she has the twin impression she’s hearing a perfectly curated performance of what he means to portray to the world and also hearing the authentic man himself.

His magnetism—or, rather, the effect of his magnetism on her—is becoming more and more difficult to ignore. It had been easier in the early days of their reacquaintance: the attraction was still there, of course—recognized and unwelcome—but managing the uneasy truce between them that had to be re-forged again every day had taken up too much of her energy. Now that the big things are out of the way and they’ve settled into a kind of routine, it’s beginning to feel as if he’s the strongest magnet in the universe and she’s nothing more than metal shavings on a file: when she’s standing across from him, she wants to be soldered to his side. When she’s in the same room with him, she wants to be in his lap.

She wants him. Purely. Plainly. Simply. And not being able to have him is torture and misery of the most acute kind.

She doesn’t know how much longer she’s going to be able to feign indifference. And to her everlasting horror and shame she’s finding it difficult to concentrate on her work. Historically, she’s approached her life analytically and methodically with emotions coming in a distant third or fourth, but it’s been the exact opposite since she started at _News Night_. Indeed, the deleterious effect of her hormones on her conscious mind has become so pronounced she’s started researching the phenomenon: why _does_ love make one lose their head? And what in the world can she do about it? She knows she hides it well and she's grateful no one seems to suspect just how much effort it takes to appear sassy and unperturbed, but sometimes it takes every ounce of energy she has to mask the regret that courses through her whenever she looks at him. Most of the time it washes over her in waves, making her feel hollow and lonely and vulnerable. Other times it seems to harden into a small fist that rests quietly in the pit of her stomach until it punches through and lands a blow so powerful she wants to double over in pain.

She’d be the first person to admit it’s absolutely ridiculous, but she’s powerless against it; it just _is._

She would change it if she could.

She cannot.

She knows she’s not the only one afflicted. The day before yesterday, she’d caught him staring at her with an expression she hadn’t seen in years and as she’d met the intensity of his gaze with her own, a current of the old desire—the one on constant simmer beneath the surface—had sparked and flared. She’d known from his expression that he’d felt it, too. Indeed, it would have been impossible for her _not_ to have known it; they may be playing different roles in each other’s lives now but they’ve seen—and touched—and loved—every part of one another.

Which is precisely the problem.

She _knows_ him.

And she can’t relegate him back to the sphere he’d occupied before she did.

She’s forgotten herself on more than one occasion. It had happened again yesterday when she’d been reading his script over his shoulder. A sentence had been giving him trouble, and she could see the tension in his neck as his fingers had gripped his pen ever more tightly. When he’d finally tossed it down in frustration, her hand had instinctively moved to the back of his head, and before she could remember who they were supposed to be to each other now, she’d begun to stroke the closely cropped hair at the nape of his neck. It was a gesture she’d made thousands of time during their life together, and once upon a time he’d have reached back and squeezed her wrist gratefully. But since that was no longer a possibility, he’d frozen—instantly—and she’d immediately jerked her hand back.

“Sorry,” she’d muttered.

Although he’d remained silent, she knew it was only a matter of time before she’d be accused of some bit of mischief that would allow him to vent his anger. Not over the infraction of which she was sure to be accused, of course, but over the real crime she’d just committed—of reminding him how deeply he’d once believed she’d loved him.

That cycle—of reminder and punishment—seems to happen like clockwork: either he forgets (as when he puts his hands on her hips to steer her out of a room) or she does—and ten minutes or two hours later he’ll discover some screw-up for which she must be reprimanded. She doesn’t know if he realizes how predictable these outbursts are but she thinks she knows the reason behind them: he may not be able to forgive her for her transgression but she suspects he can’t forgive himself either—for falling for her in the first place or for what he might feel for her.

Still.

She’d forgotten their estrangement again just now, and this time she knows the penalty will be far worse than the one he’d levied yesterday, ostensibly for not replacing the toner cartridge in the printer. Today she knows she will not get off with a lecture about leaving everyone else to do her dirty work for her because today’s crime had been much worse: she’d reminded him how much he wants her. Even if it’s against his will.

Once again, he’d been writing his script, this time for a story that would air tomorrow night. The bullpen was nearly empty this late in the evening and she'd been standing next to him as he sat at his desk. The cuff of his suit-jacket sleeve had brushed her hand and when she inhaled the fresh, pine fragrance of his soap she'd been transported—bruised and disoriented—back to the last Christmas they’d spent together. An image of his face staring up at her, his expression open and tender and loving—had floated through her mind like a sweet, painful siren song. He’d been gazing up at her as he held the ladder on which she stood to decorate the tree. She remembered how she’d bounded down the ladder and into his arms, eliciting a surprised “oof” from Will, and the way his eyes had crinkled with mirth. How her stomach turned a somersault as she’d stared into his dazzling blue eyes, utterly besotted, and how he'd lifted a hand to trace the curve of her cheek with his thumb. She remembered watching, spellbound, as his blue eyes bored into hers and, finally, the way he’d pressed his mouth against hers in a kiss so sweet and so tender she could still feel it on her lips three-and-half years later.

God, she misses him.

The memory was so vivid she felt dizzy with longing and regret and suddenly, the muscles in her legs felt as though they’d taken on the consistency of overcooked pasta. She briefly closed her eyes before grabbing onto the edge of the desk to give herself room to breathe but, apparently it had been with less poise than she’d intended, because the next moment Will’s arm was around her hip, steadying her.

“You okay?” he’d asked with some concern.

Nodding, she’d allowed herself to be guided to the smaller table in his office and made to sit.

He’d crouched in front of her, taking her hands in both of his and the electric shock she experienced as their skin made contact jolted her back to awareness. Will seemed to register a similar shock: his eyes had burned and she wondered whether it was with desire or discomfort.

“What’s wrong?” he’d asked.

“Nothing. A memory,” she’d said quickly, trying to shrug it off. To do otherwise would have been to poke a sleeping bear.

He’d looked at her cautiously, clearly trying to decide whether he dared ask the question, but in the end curiosity won out.

“Of what?” he’d asked, his expression guarded and wary.

“You. Us. It doesn’t matter.”

The bear awakened. _Us. Once upon a time there’d been an us. Why the hell did you have to remind me?_

But though his lips had pressed into a thin line, he’d only continued to gaze at her, obviously conflicted, as if he, too, knew something of the pain brought on by happy memories of the past. He waited a beat before finally tearing his gaze away, and when he’d bent his head to glance at his watch, she could feel the conversational crack between them beginning to close. As he’d fumbled for some excuse—dinner, a date, a movie—she’d had a sudden, wild urge to leap forward toward him, as if to shove a foot into a door crack to prevent it slamming shut.

If only she were free to _act_ on her impulses, she thought wearily. If only there were no consequences to doing what she so desperately wanted to do, which was smash through the artifice of their current relationship to excavate the real one. If only throwing caution to the wind would get her what she wanted instead of resistance and shock and horror. She was dying to do something— _anything_ to make him remember what was really between them instead of the play-acting they did every day. They’d loved each other passionately once. Surely something of that remained in his heart, too.

As she stared at him, she was once reminded of the fact that he was, simply put, beautiful. All of his gravity, all of his mystery and allure compacted into the air between them, touching her, caressing her, probing her like an intelligence looking for something. In that moment, all she wanted to do was lift her hand, trace the curve of his cheek, lean forward and press her lips against his. Suddenly, the line between fantasy and reality blurred and she felt herself leaning forward. And then, before she was fully aware of what she was doing, her fingers had moved to cup his cheek with her hand. Finally, as his eyes went wide with surprise, she did it. She actually _did_ it: she kissed him.

Will froze as her lips—so long missed, so lovingly remembered—moved over his. _Oh Jesus, Jesus_ , he thought. _Fuck. What are you DOING??_ And then his own subterranean desires overpowered his intellect and he began to kiss her back. Delicately at first. Sweetly. Tentatively. And then hungrily. _Mac, Mac, God, Mac_. _I love you. I love you._ He didn’t resist because at that moment it wasn’t within his power to do so: kissing her was like being trapped in a waterfall—something that overtook all his senses. He wanted to kiss her forever. He wanted to never stop kissing her.

For MacKenzie, the kiss was absolute perfection. Bliss. She drank of him greedily, slaking a thirst that had been three years in the making. As she did, the only thought in her mind was _I love you, I love you, I love you_. 

Completely independent of his will, his hand moved around to the back of her neck, and to the astonishment of them both, he parted her lips with his tongue. The sweet, warm wetness of her mouth sent a shock through his body like lightning and in that moment he knew that no matter what had passed before, this kiss was everything good, everything wholesome and right and correct all wrapped up in one sensation.

Seconds later, though, the ugly voice of his intellect reached him, having finally managed to fight its way through the sweet, soft, terrain of emotional and physical bliss to deliver its verdict: _You can’t trust her._ As its implacable tone bludgeoned everything beautiful in its path he’d jerked his head back and fallen back on his heels.

“What are you _doing_?” he exclaimed.

She leapt to her feet, horrified. “Oh, God, I did that, didn’t I?” she told him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I wanted to. But I didn’t think …”

“You didn’t think _what?_ ” he said, trying to ignore the sweetness he could still taste on his lips.

She felt herself flush. “That I was doing it. That I was _actually_ doing it. I thought I was _imagining_ doing it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry," she said, despising the uncertainty and apology in her tone since they'd been equals once, but unable to stop it, conditioned as she's become to having to walk on eggshells around him. "I shouldn’t have…”

“No. You shouldn’t have.” He felt better then, satisfied at feeling perturbed with her again, because the other feeling he has towards her, the one that steals through him whenever she looks at him, is frightening and intense and threatens to smash through every single one of his defenses.

He slowly got to his feet and as he stood before her, his expression guarded and angry, she could feel herself getting angry, too: _he_ was the one who’d stuck his goddamned tongue in her mouth—at least take some responsibility! But she bit it back and opted instead to try to appeal to his apparently still-calcified heart.

“It’s just—I _miss_ you, Billy,” she said helplessly, a little angrily. “ _So_ —”

He cut her off. “Don’t,” he said reflexively, betraying none of the conflict raging below the surface. “You did this. And we both have to live with it.”

She bit back a growl. _You patronizing, condescending, implacable ass._

A warning bell rang in the back of her mind then, but she ignored it and went on, unable to stop herself, in too far now to retrieve herself. “But I didn’t _mean_ —” she said, trying to explain for the thousandth time that she’d done what she’d done before she’d known how she felt about him, and at a time she’d thought Will, too, had been seeing other people. She’d slept with Brian—her ex-boyfriend—a dozen times in the first three months she and Will had been together and she hadn’t meant to hurt Will. She’d been convinced he was going to dump her as soon as he got tired of her and went back to his regular girlfriend, the one Brian said Will _always_ went back to. She’d been too embarrassed to ask Will about the other woman, and she’d only realized later that the other woman didn’t exist—except as a tool Brian could use to try to manipulate her. She knows now she should have been honest with Will, but she also knows she would never do anything like it again. The point is, they’d been so _happy_ together. Why the hell doesn’t that count for anything in Will’s mind?

“It doesn’t matter what you meant,” he said flatly. “It matters what you did.”

“ _Why?”_ she said in frustration _. “Why_ doesn’t it matter what I meant?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Of course you don’t,” she said bitterly. And then, with more determination: “You kissed me back, Will. Which means you still—”

His gaze was scorching in its intensity as he'd stood there, obviously trying to master his emotions, and as she'd stared into his eyes, she could see the question there, the warning, even as his lips formed words that were more truthful than anything he’d said to her in the last three-and-a-half years.

“ _What?_ ” he'd exclaimed. “I'm still attracted to you? Still have _feelings_ for you? Fuck, Mac. Of course I do!” 

_Oh my God_ , she thought. _Please, Will, please._ But however positively she wanted to interpret this revelation, the expression on his face left more than enough room for doubt. And so, although she was deathly afraid of the answer, she was compelled to ask the question.

“You do?” 

He seemed taken aback by that, but didn’t make a move until she reached up to try to tuck a wayward strand of hair behind one of her ears. The ambient light had settled about her head, illuminating the loose strands of hair like a lovely crown, and all he could think was that she was perfect. Picture perfect. As she has always been. Beautiful. Alive. Vital. In a way he himself has never been except when he was with her.

Some demon took hold of him then and he intercepted her hand, stopping her from touching the soft tendrils that framed her face. He had her hand in his now and as he tightened his fingers around hers, he told himself to _let go of her. Jesus Christ, let go of her._ He could feel the softness of her body through her clothes because somehow their bodies were touching again, their magnetism having moved them unconsciously toward one another. She could feel the length of him pressed into her torso, his legs against her skirt. 

“How could I _not?_ ” he exclaimed, as if the words were being wrenched from his throat. “I’m—” _... i_ _n love with you_ , he almost said before suddenly jerking his hand back. _No, NOT with you. Someone who looks exactly LIKE you._ But semantics had no place in this conversation because he didn’t think he could explain it, anyway. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and stepped back from her, marveling at how unbelievably fucked up it was to have to put up with this pod person standing in front of him, this alien, this woman who looked exactly like the woman he’d adored.

In any case, he had no idea why he was suddenly being so candid with someone he’d done his damnedest to keep at arm’s length for the last six months, except that he was sick of it, too. The dissonance. The battle between his heart and mind.

And then he was nothing but enraged. Is _this_ what he was going to have to put up with for the rest of their tenure at _News Night_? Constantly having to be on guard against her machinations?

It’s moments like these he wishes Charlie had never hired her. Indeed, some days he could barely deal with it (below the surface, anyway; he thinks maybe he puts up a pretty good front). But the truth is, every day’s a struggle, a constant battle to remind himself that the woman he’d loved had been a figment of his imagination. That the woman who looked and sounded exactly like her was in fact a traitor who’d never loved him. And God almighty, he wishes he could forget how much he’d loved _her_.

Not (he could admit) that the pod person in front of him didn’t have any redeeming qualities: far from it. She was brilliant at her job and at leading their team and at keeping him in check. She did and said all the right things and behaved in all the right ways and in the last six months had proven that professionally, he could trust her.

He just can’t trust her personally. But that’s precisely what he keeps forgetting.

It happens at least half-a-dozen times a day because there’s always something new to remind him. For example, she usually wears her hair down, but when she’d come in today wearing her hair up he’d instantly been transported back to another time she’d been wearing her hair up, only this time it had been in his fucking shower. They’d take one together nearly every night and he would soap her body and she would soap his and there’d be lots of stroking and kissing and nuzzling and within seconds of that image fluttering through his mind he’d had an erection so hard he could barely concentrate on the meeting, so consumed was he with memories of what had happened _after_ they’d left the shower. And then he’d had to make up some lame-ass excuse as to why he needed to remain seated after everyone else had cleared the room.

He's just so damned tired of being forced to relive those halcyon days of perfect happiness, of having to spend his days seething and furious with himself for forgetting over and over again that that happiness had been built on a foundation of sand. Who the hell cared? At the time he hadn’t known any better: he’d simply been _happy_. Day in and day out. Suffused with a kind of peace and contentment and satiety he could only dream about now. It had been like that every single day they’d been a couple. Every single fucking day. Nowadays, trying to force his conscious mind into a straitjacket to keep it where he didn’t want it to go was exhausting and for his own sanity he had to put a stop to it. He can’t trust her and what just happened meant he can’t trust himself, either.

“You’re what?” she asked.

He took a deep breath and took another step back as he stared at her, trying to conceal the conflict he’s afraid was all-too evident in his eyes.

“None of those feelings went away, Mac,” he said slowly, looking down. And then quickly, lest she got the wrong idea: “But no matter _what_ I feel,” he said, forcing himself to enunciate each word with devastating clarity: “I don’t trust you. I can’t,” he said, finally looking up and staring into her eyes. “I won’t.”

He felt a twinge of regret when he saw her eyes grow moist.

“So we’re nowhere,” he said with finality because he needed her to understand once and for all that while he no longer blamed her for being untrustworthy (after all, she couldn’t help being what she was any more than he could help the color of his hair), there could be no mistake: there was no hope for them. “We’re in this fucked-up limbo where we can’t go back and we can’t go forward.”

He shook his head ruefully and said as if to himself, “I keep hoping I’ll wake up one day and those feelings will be gone but so far … no luck. And I gotta tell you, Mac, I really gotta tell you—it _sucks_.”

 _Then WHY?_ she thought. _What the hell is WRONG with you?_ She stepped closer to him then, unwilling to lose the emotional connection they shared in that moment, however tenuous.

“Help me understand something, Billy. We could have everything we had before—which was real and solid and beautiful—if you could find a way to trust me. Why won’t you even try? If you still feel the same way about me, why won’t you even _try_?”

He stared at her, wondering how and whether to put what he felt into words. And in the end he decided he didn’t have a choice. Because he couldn’t risk having what happened a few minutes ago happen again.

When he finally spoke, every word was a punch to her gut, every syllable an assault on her deepest self. “Because the woman I loved doesn’t exist,” he says slowly, without rancor. “She was a pipe-dream. You look exactly like her, but you stabbed me in the back. She never did. She’s the one I can’t let go of. Not you.”

Her eyes filled with tears and though he felt guilty he had no idea what the hell else he could do to squelch the unresolved, _unresolvable_ tension between them. It never went away. Never diminished. In fact, he suspected it was getting stronger. The pathetic truth was that no one had ever inspired one-tenth of the emotion she (well, the woman who’d looked like her) had inspired in him and he hated it because she’s _not_ the woman he’d loved. She never was. She was an impostor the fates—with their cruel senses of humor—had decided he had to put up with every day.

But he didn’t want to hurt her—certainly for something that was outside her control. She was what she was and he wasn't so blind he couldn’t see that she had plenty to recommend her.

Just not to him.

“I’m not trying to hurt you, Mac. I’m _not_.” And he wasn’t. He was just so tired of the constant battle between the emotional and physical parts of his body and his intellect. “I’m just trying to get you to listen to me when I say you need to let it go. Because what we had—if we ever had anything—is gone.”

He put both hands on her shoulders and stared into her eyes, doing his best to ignore the waves of emotion that were inundating his body, the ones that were telling him that that wasn’t necessarily true, that maybe there was another way to look at what happened, a worthier way, one that would give him what he wanted and needed. “And it’s never coming back.”

She looked down as the tears finally spilled over her eyelashes and fuck if he couldn’t feel his eyes pricking with tears, too.

“But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you,” he told her. “I _do_. I just can’t be in a relationship with you.”

Her face crumpled still more.

“Hey,” he said, putting his finger under chin and lifting it so she had no choice but to look into his eyes. “It’s going to be okay, it _is_. And someday, probably sooner than I like, you’re gonna fall in love with some great guy and you’re not going to screw him over because you’re actually gonna love him.”

“ _Billy—_ ”

“No, it's okay, it _is_ ,” he said earnestly because eventually it would be, right? Eventually it wouldn’t feel like his heart was being ripped out of his fucking chest every time he looked at her, right? “And he’s gonna fall in love with you because fuck, who wouldn’t? And who knows, maybe I’ll meet someone, too. And you and I will work together and do a great show together and go to each other’s houses and congratulate each other on the birth of our kids … and we’ll be friends. _Good_ friends,” he said sincerely. “Because we already are.”

She shook her head and before he could stop himself he was using his fingers to wipe a tear spilling down her cheek. Her eyes finally swung back up to his and when they did, once again he was lost. _Why the hell couldn’t you have been real, Mac?_ he thought. _Why? I loved you so much._

“I’m afraid you just described my worst nightmare, Billy,” she whispered, gently moving his hand away.

She forced herself to take a step back and looked down, trying to get herself under regulation. It was time to make a decision. Although she knew the depth of feeling that still existed between them, she couldn't force him to acknowledge it because the man in front of her was intent on keeping her at bay. He was guarding his heart like a fortress and she was aware of no vulnerability that would allow her to scale the walls, no circuitous route that would allow her to smash through his defenses.

There was only one choice left to make and she knew it would either destroy her or transform her. For a brief moment, she imagined the seconds and minutes and hours and days and years that would become a single never-ending mistake and the extraordinary opportunity that would slip right through her fingers if she decided wrong. 

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly as she held his gaze.


	2. Chapter 2

She _could_ give up—and she knows any rational, self-respecting person probably would—but those people weren't in her relationship with Will. She's never been able to forget what it was like to be this man's other half, or all the little things he'd done to let her know not only that he loved her but that he knew her. As when he'd let her drag him along to her favorite yoga class, even though he'd much rather be watching a Jets game. Or the way he'd buy her favorite kind of cream cheese instead of his. Or the way he'd always had some sixth sense that would alert him when she'd skipped her afternoon meal and would bring her food, insisting she eat lest she grow lightheaded as the evening wore on. She'd never even conceived of being so happy with another person. And she knows for a fact that neither had he. In fact, he'd told her so on more than one occasion.

Once it had been while they were sitting together companionably on the couch, his head in her lap while she stroked his hair ( _"Do you have any idea how much I love you, Mac?"_ he'd said, reaching up to gently take the book she was reading out of her hand. _"Whenever I look at you or talk to you or think about you or touch you I feel ... giddy. It's crazy,"_ he'd said in wonder. She'd bent down to press her mouth against his in reply, and when she lifted her head he'd reached up to trace her lips with his fingers. _"But it's wonderful,"_ he'd said _. "You're wonderful. Do_ _you know how wonderful you are?"_

And that was after they'd been together three years.

And another time, in bed, after yet another cataclysmic lovemaking session that had reduced her to a quivering mess. She'd opened her eyes to find him staring at her, his expression full of warmth and tenderness and affection. _"I've never been so happy, Mac,"_ he'd whispered, reaching out to stroke her cheek _. "I want you to be as happy as I am. What can I do to make you as happy as I am?"_ He'd looked so vulnerable then, so worried—as if he were afraid she was going to confess to being miserable. _"I AM happy, Billy, I am,"_ she'd assured him, pulling him down for another kiss. 

He'd told her other times, of course, but the through-line through them all was that he'd loved her just as much as she'd loved him. And because of that she can't waste this chance—however minuscule—to remind him of what he'd once believed, which was that they were joined: body, soul, emotion and intellect.

She swallows, takes a deep breath, and begins, trying to keep her voice from quavering as she delivers her admittedly preposterous (or what he is sure to consider preposterous) plan. “I want you to go to therapy with me." 

His eyes dart from one side of the room to the other—as if trying to make sense of the fact that he's just landed in Crazy Town. When he finally replies, his tone is steeped in confusion.

“What?” 

“I want you to go to therapy with me," she repeats. "To fix this.”

He cocks his head as his brain struggles to catch up. _You can't possibly have said what I think you just said, could you?_ He casts back for a moment before deciding that no, she'd said it alright. _What the hell are you thinking?_

"Did you hear anything I just said?” he asks.

“Yes," she nods, gazing up at him. "But you were wrong. Because what you said was predicated on a lie.”

“What are you talking about?”

She steps closer to him. “You believe I never loved you, Will, but you are dead wrong. I _did_ love you. I _do_ love you. So much it feels like it's choking me. So much it's all I can think about: what we had and what we lost."

She wants to shake him, to knock some sense into him because she doesn't understand why he can't see what's right in front of him.

"So if _that’s_ what’s actually true and we were happy together, we can fix this. We are _obligated_ to fix this. Because what we have is too rare and too special _not_ to. I know you know that, Will. I _know_ you do.”

He blinks rapidly, trying to squelch the longing that’s making him want to forget all the promises he’s made to himself where she’s concerned.

He wants her. God, he wants her. But he can’t trust her.

She goes on, unable to stop because she can't. Not until she has to. “Listen to me," she pleads. "Please listen to me.”

She goes on in a rush, fearful that this, her last hope for reconciliation, is going to be dead in the water the moment the late-night janitor interrupts them. If that happens, she knows she'll likely never get another chance.

“Right now there’s a door between us. And on my side is love and joy and happiness. But the door is closed and the only handle is on your side. All you have to do is open the door, Will. Just a little. A therapist will help you walk through it.”

He stares at her, mouth agape. _You can’t possibly be serious. If you think I’m letting you get close enough to me to hurt me again, you're crazy._ Yet while he can feel his annoyance starting to build, he's not so lacking in self-awareness that he doesn't recognize the other thing that comes along behind it: a fleeting burst of hope and he knows it's because he has always admired her persistence, her certitude and her refusal to give up until she had no other choice but to do so. Just as he can't help but admire her willingness to go toe-to-toe with him, to challenge him or to make him justify himself to her. But though he admires her, he's not going to let her get away with acting like this is something he should just _get over_. She broke his heart into a trillion pieces and he will never be able to trust her again.

His answer is clipped and his tone defiant. "No."

 _God. How can you be so stubborn? So pig-headed? Happiness is right in front of you but you refuse to let it in!_

“That’s your guard dog talking, Will. What does your heart want?”

He stares at her and the word is almost out of his mouth before he manages to bite it back.

_You._

“Not to be broken,” he says flatly.

“And if I can guarantee that it won’t be?”

He snorts. “Your guarantees don’t hold a lot of water.”

“But if they did, Will. If they _did,_ " she says through gritted teeth. " _That’s_ what you’re missing here. Everything you’re saying is based on a belief that isn’t true. I’m asking you to change the lens, Will. _To change the fucking lens_. What would your answer be if you knew you could trust me?”

“I can’t.”

“You _can,”_ she says in frustration _. “That’s_ what I’m trying to tell you. Because _that_ is the truth! Not the crap you’ve been telling yourself.”

“No.”

She silent for a moment as she considers her response. She’s out of ammunition. Weariness settles around her shoulders like a lead blanket. "Please," she whispers, incapable of preventing herself from trying one last time. "Please don't throw what we have away, Will. Not again."

God, he hates himself for hurting her but she did this. _She_. And while he knows what he's about to utter may well be a bald-faced lie (it sure as hell feels like it anyway), she doesn't have to know it.

She doesn't _deserve_ to know it.

"We don't have anything. And we never did."

Her eyes fill with tears once more as she realizes the horrible, soul-destroying truth: it's over. Again. She feels like a criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. She's never felt so small (well, except for that one time) because she's obviously been _so wrong_. She thought she could remind him of what was beautiful and pure between them and that that would be enough to make him want to lay down his arms and reclaim what they had. But it wasn't enough. It will _never_ be enough. There's a great stabbing pain in her heart and and in her stomach and though all she wants to do is curl up into a ball and weep, she settles for taking a step back from him. “I’ll start putting out feelers,” she says tiredly, not looking at him.

_What?_

“A headhunter from the BBC contacted me last week, so I’ll give him a call.” She looks at the door and when she speaks her tone is flat, without inflection. “It shouldn’t be too long. I’ll be out of your way soon.”

_No! I don’t want you to leave! I just don’t want to be in love with you anymore. Is that too fucking much to ask?_

She turns away from him.

“Mac!” he says urgently, stepping in front of her so he can put both hands on her shoulders and look her in the eyes once more. “You don’t have to leave—I don’t want you to leave.”

She shakes her head. “I can’t stay. I’ll never be able to get over this—over you—if I have to see you every day.” She reaches out her hand to cup his cheek. “I _love_ you, Will,” she says with such feeling his heart stutters in his chest. “So much. If you could see inside my heart for one second there wouldn’t be a doubt in your mind. But you can’t. Or … you won’t. So, you’re right. We’re nowhere.”

She pulls her hand away and takes a step back. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says, stepping past him and heading for the door.

He watches her go and the next day she’s surprised when the punishment for the earlier infraction doesn’t come. 

\--

They steer clear of each other as much as possible for the rest of the week, and when she asks for three days off to go to London for the interview he doesn’t fight her on it.

It goes well, and when they offer her the job she accepts it.

She waits until after the show one night to hand him her letter of resignation (she doesn’t think he’ll insist on honoring the part of her contract that requires him to fire her).

His head jerks up when he scans the first few lines.

“Two weeks? You’re leaving in two weeks?”

She nods. “That’ll give me a couple weeks to find a place and settle in before I start.”

She hadn’t said anything about how the interview had gone and wishful thinking (though he hadn’t dared analyze why) had dictated his assumption that it hadn’t gone well. He’d soon put it out of his mind. “But—” _I don’t want you to go. I don’t._ He wonders if any man has ever been more detached from his own psyche than he is because he has zero insight into why he doesn’t. So he sticks to the surface. “What about the show?”

“Jim will take over until you find someone else. But I hope you’ll consider keeping him on, Will. He’s good. He’ll do a good job for you.”

“But—”

He deflates quickly as he thinks back to their conversation a couple of weeks ago. He’s being selfish. He can’t give her what she wants. He’ll never be able to give her what she wants. And who knows, maybe if he doesn’t have to see her every day he’ll be able to get over her, too. Not that that strategy has ever worked before. But maybe this time it will different. There are no more hard feelings between them, no more blind rage. There’s only resignation and sadness. They’re friends now. Colleagues. It no longer hurts quite so badly to see her. He knows he’ll miss her but in that moment he convinces himself it’s because she’s his most trusted work colleague. In the end, maybe it’s for the best. If he doesn’t have to see her every day, maybe he’ll finally be able to place her in the past where she belongs.

He sighs. “I’ll—we’ll—miss you.”

She only nods and once again he feels like shit because he can see she’s about to cry. “Thank you. I’ll miss you—all of you, too.”

“You’ll keep in touch?” 

“Of course,” she lies.

“Good. It’s not going to be the same without you, but we’ll keep trying to fight the good fight. And Mac?”

“What?”

“Thank you,” he says sincerely. “For righting the ship.”

She nods and walks away.

\--

_November 2010_

She’s been gone two weeks and once again, his life is shit without her. How had he forgotten? Now it’s even worse than it was the first time around. He used to feel the pain of their separation in his stomach, in his gut, but self-righteous outrage had dulled it. There’s no refuge now—only longing—but for what he can’t explain: she’s still a pod person. She’s still not the person he’d thought she was. What the fuck is his problem?

He doesn’t know. All he knows is that he misses her.

_\--_

_January 2011_

She’s been gone six weeks and every day is worse than the last. Once again, there’s a hole in the world where she used to be. Though she’d only been back in his orbit for six months he’d quickly come to depend on her keen insight, resolute good humor and perhaps most importantly, her ability to cut through his churlishness with grace and aplomb.

She’d _known_ him. And he misses having someone around who did.

It’s painfully odd to be in this newsroom without her, attempting to lead the team that she built. And while no one explicitly says so, he’s pretty sure he’s on everyone’s shit list. She’d gone to great lengths not to tie her exit to him, assuring everyone this was an opportunity she simply couldn’t pass up, but he’s pretty sure no one had been fooled, especially considering the fact that the audience for her new show is one-third the size of _News Night’s._

The show she left behind limps along—she’d trained Jim well, so there are no obvious dips in quality. Still, there’s one thing Jim will never be able to do and that is provide the spark and the idealism that would inspire Will to get off his ass. With no one left to impress (however subconsciously), Will stops resisting the urge to phone it in.

What the hell does it matter, anyway?

She’s gone.

He has no idea how she’s doing because she won’t return his calls or letters or emails. Though he appreciates the fact that turnabout is fair play and all, her silence is deafening. It’s a rebuke that roils his stomach and suffuses him with regret. What the fuck had he said to her that night in his office? Try as he might, he can’t really remember. Mostly what he remembers is how he’d felt when she’d kissed him, how good and right and solid it had felt, as if she were offering him something rare and precious. He remembers too how he’d felt moments later when he’d remembered they had no business kissing each other and how much that had hurt.

His first attempt at contact (four days after she arrives in London) is admittedly lame _(“Hey, Mac. Just checking in to see how you’re doing. We miss you. Give me a call, will you?”_ ). She doesn’t, of course, and as the weeks pass his messages grow more pointed and frankly, more imploring _(“I know you’re busy, but do you think you could give me a call? I’d really like to touch base with you. See how you’re doing.”_ ).

Jim’s obviously under strict orders not to share the details of her new life with him, so the staff soon learn not to bother Will between the hours of two and three in the afternoon because that’s when he live streams her show.

Seeing her name in the credits is the only way he knows for certain she’s alive and well.

\--

_February 2011_

Ten weeks gone now. Two-and-a-half months’ worth of radio silence.

He awakens most days with her on his mind. While he can’t say with any certainty it’s because he’d been dreaming of her (he’s always had a hard time remembering his dreams), he’s left with the distinct impression that he had. Indeed, when his eyes pop open it often feels as though he’s on the cusp of some vitally important awareness in relation to her but the sensation is so short-lived he’s never able to catch the song.

He no longer has amnesia about the conversation that precipitated her latest exodus from his life: it had come roaring back to him (yes, in a dream) and he’d been ashamed when he’d awakened at just how cavalierly (and resolutely) he’d thrown her dreams about the possibility of a future with him in her face.

He knows only two things: there’s a hole in his life that only she can fill and he can’t trust her.

Which leaves him exactly where he’s been for the last few years:

Nowhere.


	3. Chapter 3

_Monday, March 7, 2011_

His change in perspective does not come in a deluge, but in the drip-drip form of a _Reader’s Digest_ homily about a kid who won’t stop shredding paper and a visit with the psychiatrist-son of an old therapist who dropped dead while Will wasn't paying attention.

Will is reluctant to acknowledge—even to himself—what motivated him to make the appointment in the first place (he figures he'll just concoct some pretext when he gets there), but decides he may as well keep it. Still, there’s only one thing on his mind on the car ride over, and it takes less than five minutes after exchanging pleasantries with Dr. Habib to bring it up. Will gives the doctor a brief synopsis of his and MacKenzie’s sordid history—including their most recent dust-up—and when he finishes his tale he waits for the sympathetic murmurs to start rolling in. But apparently, the good doctor doesn't have time for that crap. 

"We can go over how it made you feel when she betrayed you, but you've been doing that for what ...” the doctor says, looking down at the clipboard in his hand. “...almost four years now? I think you’ve probably got it covered."

Will opens his mouth to speak but Dr. Habib puts his hand up to silence him.

"There's a reason you can't let go of her, Will," the man says, not unkindly. "And from everything you just told me and everything I read in my father's … shall we say ... _copious_ notes about the two of you, it's pretty simple: you still love her and you still want her. After all this time and everything that's happened."

Will starts to defend himself, to remind Dr. Habib of the words he'd spoken not _three minutes ago_ , the ones about MacKenzie being an _impostor_ , but the doctor apparently has Will's number: not only can he predict the next thing out of Will's mouth he clearly doesn't give a shit.

"I don't believe you were in love with someone who didn’t exist,” he tells him. “People aren’t fixed. They evolve. They make stupid, ill-informed choices all the time. Sometimes they learn from their mistakes. And sometimes they change.”

He lets that sink in for a moment before continuing.

“You said she said she slept with her ex-boyfriend when she thought you weren't serious about her, and that it happened before she fell in love with you. And that after she did, she was completely devoted and faithful to you. I've never met her, and I can't say with any certainty she was telling the truth, but can you say with any certainty she wasn’t?"

Will can see where this is going and he is _not_ happy about it. Is he about to get yet another lecture about changing the fucking lens? Still, he _is_ paying the man several hundred dollars for this exercise, so he takes a second to toy with the idea. Reluctantly. And the answer is: _No. I can't say with any certainty she wasn't telling the truth_. He doesn't have to admit that out loud, though.

The doctor waits a beat and when Will doesn't answer, goes on. “The other question you might want to ask yourself is why you're clinging so fiercely to a narrative that not only may not be true but that's actually blocking the path to what it is you really want. There’s got to be some payoff in it for you. What is it?”

The answer to that one’s easy: letting her in and losing her the first time around nearly killed him. Letting her in and losing her a second time would finish him off.

“I assume that’s a rhetorical question?” Will finally says.

“Do you want it to be?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Dr. Habib says blandly, looking down at his clipboard again. “My father didn't leave many notes about MacKenzie herself. He never met her, right?"

Will shakes his head.

"Alright. I'd like to ask you a few questions about her."

"Go ahead."

"Is she attractive?"

Will snorts, momentarily forgetting that Dr. Habib has never met her. Is that even a real question? Of course, she’s attractive. She's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen in real life. No creature in the universe shines as bright as MacKenzie McHale, but he’s not about to say that.

"Yes.”

"How attractive? On a scale of one to ten."

"Fifteen."

Dr. Habib smirks. "Interesting. Is she loving? Affectionate?"

"Yes."

"Smart?"

"Very."

"Good sense of humor?"

Will nods.

"Dependable?"

Will raises his eyebrows at him.

"Well, except for the obvious," the doctor qualifies.

"Yes."

"Accomplished?"

"Yes. Is this going somewhere?"

"Patience. Does she challenge you?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Will says, unable to resist squirming in his chair. “Jesus Christ, can you please get to the point?”

“Fine. Here it is: how long did it take you to discover those things about her?"

"About a minute-and-a-half."

"So how long do you think it’s going to take someone else to discover those things about her?”

Will swallows. The idea _has_ occurred to him. And does occur to him. From time to time. But he doesn't want to think about that, let alone talk about that, so he deflects. “Another rhetorical question?”

“Sure," the doctor says noncommittally. "So, how long do you think it's going to take MacKenzie—even if she still has feelings for you _—_ to give the guy who discovers all those things about her a chance? And maybe even fall in love with him?"

_Crap._

"And if it gets that far, how long do you think it will take for her to decide to marry him and have a family with him? She’s in her thirties, right?”

Will suppresses a groan.

“So … since you’ve been trying to get over her for _nearly four years_ (without success, I might add, which by the way, should tell you something), the question you should be asking yourself is not ‘How can I get over her?’ but ‘How am I going to feel when she marries someone else?’”

 _Crap again._ Why hadn't he thought of that? He’d known of it, of course, of the possibility, but despite the depressing picture he'd painted of their future, the one in which she falls in love with some great guy and he hooks up with … well ... _someone,_ he hadn’t actually believed that part of the bullshit he’d been spewing because it had all been in the abstract. Way off in the future. After he no longer cared. Somehow. He can’t move on from her, so naturally he’d assumed she wouldn’t be able to move on from him. Not really, _really_ move on from him. Sure, he’d pretended to move on himself, but that was just a smokescreen: none of the women he'd paraded in front of MacKenzie had been actual competition for MacKenzie because MacKenzie is without peer—however much he may hate that and however much he may wish it weren't true. The thought of her _actually_ moving on, of overhearing Jim tell Maggie she got married or had a baby isn’t to be borne. What would that do to him?

He guesses it would probably kill him.

 _God_ , he thinks, wiping his hand across his face. He’s a fucking idiot. Of _course,_ someone else would want her ( _he_ wants her, for Christ's sake). She's always been a magnet for men and women alike because she's always shined brighter than anyone in the room. In fact, he can't count the number of times he's watched guys chat her up only to be shot down. He considers that for a moment and then remembers why that was. _Because she only had eyes for me_.

_Jesus._

" _That's_ what's going to happen, Will. And probably sooner than you think. So, you should prepare yourself. Or ... you can do whatever you have to do to make sure that doesn't happen. It's your choice. But I'd advise you to make it before time—or someone else—makes it for you."

\--

That night, as Will sits alone on his balcony with a joint and a guitar he hasn’t played since she left, the words she’d spoken that day in his office trickle into his consciousness.

And for the first time he allows their meaning to penetrate.

_I love you … if you could see inside my heart for one second there wouldn’t be a doubt in your mind ..._

_What we had was real and solid and beautiful … THAT’s what’s true …_

_There’s a door between us and on my side is love and joy and happiness …_

The last thing is the clincher. What if she was right about that? What if it really _was_ as simple as making a choice? Of _choosing_ to open the door? He allows the words to roll around in his mind in a way he’s never done before. And then a question floats to the surface: what if she’d _actually_ been telling the truth when she’d said that she’d believed what her dumbass ex had told her about his womanizing? What if it _had_ _actually been true_ that she’d been completely faithful and devoted to him from the moment she’d fallen in love with him until he’d cast her out of his life? They’d spent four years together. What if those four years _weren’t_ a lie? What if she’d _actually loved_ _him_ and been faithful to him and had wanted to spend the rest of her life with him?

What would that _mean_?

It would mean she’s not a pod person. She’s MacKenzie, the woman he'd adored.

And just like that, the two images he keeps of her in his mind—the impostor and the woman of his dreams—integrate.

Yet he'd abandoned her.

Twice.

A feeling of cold shame washes over him.

_What have I done?_

_\--_

_Friday, March 11, 2011_

_London_

It had been such a long day. Not work-wise: the show had gone well, as it has since MacKenzie got here. No, her troubles are of a more personal variety: she’s homesick. For _News Night_ and New York and her team.

And for Will, of course.

It still feels odd being here: having lived in the States for so many years, the sea of British accents surrounding her is still jarring. Luckily, the show’s ratings are good and her bosses are thrilled by her managing of the show. She has a good team here. She’s just impatient for the strangeness of it all to pass.

She looks up from her phone when she hears her assistant call her name.

“MacKenzie?”

“Yes?” MacKenzie answers.

“Security called. Your visitor’s here. Do you want them to send him up or do you want to meet him downstairs?”

MacKenzie’s brows furrow. _A visitor at five past eight?_

“Visitor? I’m not expecting anyone. Did they say who it is?”

“Will something.”

MacKenzie’s heart thuds wildly in her chest. No. It couldn’t be. _He wouldn’t just show up here, would he?_ She’s successfully—if impolitely—evaded his attempts at contact for months. She hasn’t returned a single call, email or letter and while she feels guilty she knows she’d be courting disaster if she did. She can’t afford to let him in. Literally. Because she’ll never be able to keep him in the past if she allows him in the present. 

“Did he give his last name?”

Her assistant looks down at the piece of paper in her hand. “Muh-ka-voy.”

 _Oh God._ “ _MacUh_ —never mind,” she says. Will’s obviously planned well: her show ended five minutes ago so she has no excuse not to see him. She takes a deep breath. _What the fuck is she going to say to him and why the fuck is he here?_ “Please tell them to send him up.”

Heart racing, she starts to move towards the elevator. Someone asks her a question she tries to focus on answering but her heart is hammering so loudly she can barely hear the question.

She’s just about made it to the elevators when another person calls her name. “MacKenzie, the ambient sound’s making it impossible to hear what the chap’s saying and the audio’s not on two tracks. What are going to do for tomorrow night?”

She offers a solution that would have been obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together but she manages to speak kindly. After all, he’s new and young and earnest. Plus, he’s the relative of some higher-up.

“Now, why didn’t I think of that?” the man tells her. “You’re brilliant.”

And then she hears Will’s voice. Beautiful. Melodic. Shiver-inducing. “She _is_ brilliant,” he says from behind her. As if in slow motion, she turns toward the sound and there he is, dressed in a crisp, short-sleeved shirt which precisely matches the color of his eyes. He’s got the strap of his laptop bag slung over one shoulder and the handle of a small carry-on in his left hand.

When their gazes lock all the din caused by people clearing out this Friday night evaporates. All she can hear is her heart thumping. All she’s aware of is him. Because he represents home and perfection and love—even if she's the only one who thinks it or feels it.

And then she thinks, _How DARE you?_ She’s spent the last few months trying to evict him from her heart and she can rejoice in at least one small success: she can at least _look_ at someone else now—she can at least _entertain_ the idea of someone else now—which is far more than she’s been able do in years. In fact, she’s just started dating Martin—one of the presenters on her show. He’s lovely and sweet and even if being with him feels a little like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole she isn’t discouraged: even with Will it had been awkward at first and she’s hoping her feelings will deepen in time.

How dare Will show up here and make her forget a lovely, sweet man who ticks all her boxes and with whom she can picture a future? Martin hasn’t hurt her or made her feel that no matter what she does she’ll never be good enough. Martin likes her unreservedly, without hesitation. Unlike Will, who routinely makes her feel two-inches tall.

Then why does the sight of him make her feel as if she’s been shot through with electricity? Why does she suddenly feel as if the sky has opened up and sunshine is pouring straight into her soul?

She hates herself for it. And him even more. She’s managed to reduce her thoughts of him at least ten percent in recent months and now he’s gone and ruined it. God knows how bad it’s going to be once he walks out that door. _Damn you. Damn you._

Will stands there, equally stunned, because now he sees _her_. The woman he lost. Not the impostor who turned up the day of the BP oil spill. Outwardly, each woman looks the same but for the first time in years he allows himself to see the signs of _his_ MacKenzie, signs he’d done everything within his power to ignore during the six months she’d spent at _News Night_ : the biting of the lower lip. The dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. The long eyelashes. _It IS you. It IS_. _Why the fuck didn’t I see it before?_ He’s rendered utterly speechless because she is all that is bright and good. Her cheerful disposition—the warmth of her love—the heat of her passion: if only he hadn’t waited so long, if only it wasn’t too late, she could have returned all that to his life and more.

All eyes are on them. Some recognize Will, some don’t, but none of them miss the tension emanating from MacKenzie, who’s visibly on tenterhooks. Every set of eyes in the bullpen is on the two of them as their magnetism forces them unsteadily toward one another. She stops three feet in front of him and although he feels in his bones that it’s _her_ , the woman he lost, he’s struck by the vastness of the chasm between them and even more by the suffocating weight of the terrible task before him:

That of telling her goodbye.

Again.

Only this time for good.

And this time ... not by choice. 

\---

“Will,” she says, giving him a forced smile. “What are you doing here?”

His throat closes and panic swells at the terrifying thought that this is his one and only chance to make things right and that his every hope of achieving if not happiness then at least closure where she’s concerned hangs on his ability to choose the right words— _now_. The strangest sort of dizziness—crippling and horribly inopportune—creeps upon him, rendering him tongue-tied and lightheaded but he fights through it to clear his head and speak at last.

“Investigating the problem with the phones in this country. They only seem to work one way.”

She wraps her arms around her torso in a self-protective gesture.

“Sorry—I’ve been—”

“Busy. I understand.” His tone is cheerful, not wanting to put her off, wanting her to know that he understands all too well the kinds of things that might make someone not return someone’s calls. When she doesn’t respond, he adds “It’s good to see you. Really good.” So good it feels like his heart’s going to leave his body. He has no idea how or why it’s happened but all the discord, all the dissonance he’d felt in his body every time he looked at her during her time at _News Night_ has disappeared. Although the biggest part of what he feels now is sorrow and grief, there is one thing he cannot regret: he’s seen her again and the image of her standing before him—white of face yet still absolutely beautiful—will stay with him for the rest of his life.

She gives him a tight smile. “Here on business?”

“No,” he says vaguely. _I came to see you,_ is on the tip of his tongue but he bites it back. _Well … and that specialist my doctor wants me to see._

It’s such an unremarkable exchange, yet it feels so very significant. His eyes attempt to take in every inch of her appearance, to read every hint, however subtle, of her thoughts upon seeing him but she’s wearing the same mask she was wearing the last time he saw her, when she’d stood in his office to say goodbye her last day at ACN. It’s wary and guarded and meant to reveal nothing of her true feelings. He understands it, of course, understands her need for self-protection but it still hurts, particularly since he himself has traveled emotional lifetimes in the last few days.

“Oh,” she replies.

Abruptly, he switches gears. “I watched the show downstairs. I see you’re still working your magic. They’re lucky to have you.”

“We have a good team,” she says, looking around at the rest of people assembled who are still staring.

“Makes all the difference,” he replies, followed by an awkward pause. “Listen, are you free right now?” he asks. “I thought we could catch up—have dinner or a drink.”

He looks so vulnerable she’s tempted to say yes. But she can’t. She can already feel the progress she’s made toward eradicating him from her heart and mind and body disappearing. 

“I’m sorry, Will. I can’t.” She doesn’t even try to come up with an excuse.

“Oh, okay,” he says, crestfallen. “How about tomorrow?”

“I’m—rather busy.” She looks to her assistant for support. “I have to prep for an interview next week. You know how it is.”

“Sure,” he says. He waits a moment which she doesn’t attempt to fill. “Well, how about Sunday? I don’t leave ‘til the evening.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

He’s silent for a moment. “You don’t want to talk to me. Which probably should have been obvious from the dozens of calls you haven’t returned, but …”

“It isn’t that—I just—”

“Look. I don’t blame you. But—I really need to talk you, Mac. Just for a little while. I won’t take up much of your time.”

She shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Will. I can’t.” She starts to extend her hand but retracts it. “It was good to see you. Please tell everyone I said hello. Excuse me.” She turns around and starts to head toward her office.

“Mac— _wait_ ,” he says, bolting after her. Electricity shoots through her when he grabs her arm and so, reluctantly, she turns around. His expression is pleading and wounded and though she wants nothing more than to throw her arms around him, he did this. _He_. As much as she’s responsible for their initial breakup he’s responsible for their current estrangement. And she can’t afford to let him in. 

“Please. It’s important,” he tells her.

She stares at him, unblinking, even as she admits to herself she isn’t nearly as unmoved by his sudden appearance as she’s pretending. Indeed, the rebellious part of her just wants to take whatever he’s offering and damn the consequences, but she can’t. She’s spent the last few months trying to put him out of her heart and mind and she can’t risk it. _You have to leave. No good can come from this._ She knows she is thisclose to giving him anything he wants but she also knows that if she does there will be nothing left of her. He has to leave. Now. Her emotional survival depends on it.

“You can’t just show up here, Will," she says reproachfully. "It isn’t fair.”

“I’m not here to hurt you. I need to tell you—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” she snaps. The ferocity in her voice stuns him and he blinks rapidly. “I don’t mean to be rude,” she says more gently. “And I’m not trying to hurt you, either. But we’ve said everything there is to say to each other.”

“We haven’t. _I_ haven’t. Please.”

At that moment, a man comes up and puts his arm around her. “Ready to go, love?” he asks.

“Almost,” she says, aiming a smile at the man as Will’s stomach falls into his shoes. _Fuck. I’m too late. I’m too late. Oh God._ And then he remembers that someone in his position isn’t allowed to have those kinds of thoughts. That only someone with something to offer—namely, a future—is permitted to have those kinds of thoughts. Which is something he doesn’t have. Well, is unlikely to have, anyway. If the test results that came in two days ago are any indication.

When the man standing next to MacKenzie gets a good look at Will, his warm, friendly smile curdles. The three of them stand awkwardly together for a moment but when neither man budges or speaks, she’s compelled to make the introductions. “Martin, this is Will McAvoy, my—colleague from New York. Will, this is Martin Fleming. He’s the presenter—anchor—of our show.”

“Good to meet you, mate,” Martin says, though his voice belies the statement. Even so, he extends a hand to Will. “I saw a few of your shows when we were recruiting MacKenzie. Very impressive. Not here to try to steal her back, are you?” he says, a challenge in his voice.

Reflexively, Will shakes Martin’s hand even as he gazes into MacKenzie’s eyes so deeply and with such intensity she doesn’t have the fortitude to look away. But that doesn’t mean she’s willing to give him what he wants. She won’t be drawn in again. She _won't_. She's not some toy he can just pick up and cast off again as soon as he grows tired of it.

Still, it would be inappropriate to say such a thing (certainly in mixed company) and far too revealing. So she swallows and supplies the answer to Martin’s question. “Will and I were just saying our goodbyes.”

Martin looks from MacKenzie to Will, clearly relieved. “Oh, that’s a shame,” Martin says unconvincingly. “Good meeting you,” he says before turning back to MacKenzie. “Shall we?”

“Yes,” MacKenzie answers. “Goodbye, Will,” she says.

And then she forces herself to turn around and start moving in the opposite direction. As she does she decries her own spinelessness because _nothing_ has changed. Nothing. Every cell in her body is still crying out for him. She shakes her head to try to clear it as white-hot, impotent rage surges through her. Will she _ever_ be free of this? Will she _ever_ be free of him? Will her heart ever let her move on? God, she wants to throttle him. And herself.

But Will cannot let this be their last conversation. “Mac, please,” he calls, rushing after her. In a few steps he overtakes her and Martin and plants himself in their path. “I’m sorry,” he says, addressing Martin before turning his attention to MacKenzie. “But I really need to talk to you. It’s important.” He hesitates. “It's a matter of life and death.”

Her breath stills in her lungs. “What are you talking about?”

Will looks around at those assembled who obviously have nothing better to do than watch him make a fool of himself and decides he’s got nothing left to lose. Literally.

“I’d rather do this privately, but if you insist on doing it here, I'll do it here,” he says quietly. “Mac …" He trails off then and something in his expression makes her heart seize in her chest. His lips part and when he finally speaks the words are so heinous she almost loses her gorge right there, right in the middle of her newsroom.

"I’m sick.”

_What?_

The words hang between them. Malformed. Malevolent. Utterly terrifying.

And then

everything

in

her

universe

crashes

to

a

halt.


	4. Chapter 4

Shocked and stunned, she just stands there, horror and disbelief etched in her features. _Oh my God. Please, please_.

She thinks maybe he says “I’m sorry to blurt it out like that, but …” but she doesn’t know because all she can hear is the blood rushing in her ears. Gradually, however, his far-off, melodic voice begins to penetrate her senses.

 _“…_ that’s why I need to talk to you,” he’s saying. “To tell you how sorry I am. For _everything_. While I still—” He trails off.

She shakes her head then, willing him to take it back, to be silent, or to at least stop making sounds whose meaning will not, cannot be endured. And then she’s staggering toward him like a drunken sailor. Martin is forgotten, everyone in the room is forgotten because now there is only Will. Her outstretched hands grab hold of his and when he pulls her against his chest and enfolds her in his arms so tightly she thinks he might crush the life out of her, all she can hear is his heart beating and all she can feel is that despite everything, everything, _this_ is where she belongs.

Suddenly, nothing that’s happened over the last few years matters. Not a single, solitary thing. Because he needs her. No matter what’s happened between them, that need is written in every beat of his heart, every harsh inhalation and exhalation of breath. It’s pouring out of him and into her and she knows she’ll do everything within her power to give it to him. _Please, please._

She forces herself to take a step back so she can peer up into his face and what she sees makes her heart—already thudding like a jackhammer—thud even faster: his expression is full of so much sadness and regret and longing that she wonders how the hell she’s going to live through the next thirty seconds. He remains still a moment, then slowly lifts her hands without loosening his grip and presses them against his chest. She can feel his every breath and her lips part as she tries to say something, anything, but the lump in her throat keeps her silent.

Until a soft whisper finally emerges. “What’s wrong?” 

He suddenly remembers where they are. Looking around, he says, “Can we—go somewhere—private?”

“Yes,” she says stupidly, glancing around. The rest of the room is a blur to her. For all MacKenzie knows, everyone is staring at them. Or no one. It doesn’t matter a whit to her, she realizes in that moment, what any of them think, or what the proper thing is. She'd known from the moment he touched her—perhaps before that—she could deny this man nothing.

Martin's presence registers momentarily and when he nods his assent her gaze moves back to Will. “Yes, of course. Come with me.”

She lets go of one of Will's hands and clutches the other tightly as she leads him to her office. He trails along behind her, taking comfort in her presence, solid and steady next to him and relishing the feeling of her skin against his.

The door closes behind them and they stand facing one another, still holding each other’s hands.

“What is it?” she whispers.

“They’re not sure, but probably a ..." He pauses and fixes her with an intense, burning stare. "... glioma."

Instinctively, involuntarily, both her hands fly up to cover her mouth.

"A brain tumor," she says, dropping her hands. _No. No. No. Please, no._ "Oh my God." 

"Yeah. I’ve been asymptomatic, so it’s kind of a head-scratcher. I went in for my annual check-up, had some blood work done and that’s when it showed up. I'm kind of lucky, I guess. They don't usually perform those kinds of tests on someone who isn't showing any symptoms, but my doctor's involved in an early detection program that uses AI to detect cancer. I’m seeing an oncologist here tomorrow to get an MRI and go over the results.”

At her confused look, he adds, “Some renowned specialist my GP knows who’s willing to see me on a Saturday. He found out I was coming to see you and thought I could kill two birds with one stone. Apparently the specialist uses some kind of experimental imaging technology that isn't available in the US.”

She doesn’t ask him to elaborate; she’s too afraid of what his answer to her next question will be.

“If that’s … if that's what it is ... what’s the prognosis?” she says in a small voice.

He hesitates. “Not great. A year. Maybe two.”

“Oh, _Billy_!” she says, clapping her hand over her mouth mouth once more in horror.

“It’s okay,” he says, gently taking hold of her wrists as he stares down into her face. “It gives me time to wind things down. At a somewhat leisurely pace.”

“But that might not be it, right? It might be something else?”

“Unlikely. Apparently these types of markers nearly always point to that kind of tumor.”

She can’t stop the tears from spilling over. “Don’t cry, Mac,” he says, bringing his hand up to stroke her cheek. “Please don’t cry. It is what it is and I’m grateful I’ll have some time to wrap things up.”

She nods, sniffling, as she tries to master her emotions. “But you haven’t had any symptoms?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

“So you’re not in any pain?”

“No.”

She doesn’t know what to do with her hands or her body or her mind. She’s never felt more helpless in her life. “That’s … good. What can I do? What do you need?”

“Nothing, sweetheart,” he says, using the old endearment. “I just wanted to see you before … well, while I could. To tell you how sorry I am.” He gazes at her intently. “For what happened between us.”

While gratified by his words, the past no longer matters. Nothing matters but getting him through this. “It’s not important, Will.” And somehow, it just isn’t. “What’s next? What can we do?”

“Nothing. I'll get the MRI, the specialist will give me her opinion, she'll talk to my doctor and then we'll start treatment, I guess. If there is any.”

“You don’t know?”

“To tell you the truth, I haven’t looked into it. I’ll see what the specialist says and go from there.”

“So you’re placing your fate entirely in her hands?”

“No … my doctor is well-respected, he says this specialist is well-respected … I don’t think they’re going to steer me wrong.”

 _The man is an imbecile._ She's always played dual roles in their relationship, the idealist and the pragmatist, and it seems this will be no exception. She spends her life scanning the environment, anticipating potential problems and devising workarounds even as she examines it for opportunities and actionable insights. In any given moment there is typically one thought in her mind: _where do we want to go and what specific steps do we have to take to get there?_ Will, though outwardly the more pragmatic of the two, tends to get sidetracked, veering off into what-ifs and whys so often he loses the opportunity to act. She, on the other hand, has always been firmly grounded in the present and completely focused on the specific steps she must take to achieve her goals.

“Do you have a copy of your test results? With you?”

“Yeah, but …”

“Where are they?”

“Right here,” he says, pointing to the briefcase he’d put down as soon as they made it into her office. 

“Give them to me and I’ll scan them."

“Why?”

“So we can get a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And a fifth, if necessary.”

“Mac, I don’t think that’s …”

“You’re not thinking clearly, Will. You may be willing to stake your life on the opinion of one person but I’m not. I’ll do some research tonight and send it off."

“To whom?”

“Other specialists.”

“How are you going to find them?”

“In the medical literature. One of my friends from Cambridge is an oncologist, so I’ll send them to him, too. And he’ll send them to whomever he knows. We'll send them your MRI after we make contact."

“You don’t have to do that, Mac.”

She looks at him incredulously. “Of course, I do.”

“No, you don’t. I’m not your problem.”

She gives him the resolute look he knows all too well: she’s a woman on a mission and she will not be deterred. “It’s not a problem. It’s what needs to be done and I can do it, so I will.”

He sighs and takes the papers out of the briefcase and hands them to her.

“I’ll go scan this,” she tells him.

“Okay,” he says. “Then you can get on with your evening.” He looks at her meaningfully.

She blinks. _Christ. Martin._ She’d forgotten all about him. “I need to tell Martin he should go on without me.”

“You don’t have to. I don’t want to spoil—”

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that. Wait here.” She tears herself away from him and walks into the newsroom which is now empty save for the late-night janitorial staff. The thought of Will being ill is a weight on her chest that makes it hard to breathe. _How could he possibly have some life-threatening illness? How?_ The tears fall freely now and she wipes them away angrily as she pushes open the door to Martin’s office.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey.” He stands up, comes around the other side of the desk and wraps his arms around her. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” she says, stepping back from him.

“That bad, huh?”

She nods. “Looks like it. We’ll know more tomorrow after he talks to a specialist.”

As she looks at Martin she knows everything has changed: her resolve regarding Will and her hopes for a future with the man in front of her. Now there is nothing but Will and making sure he has the best possible chance. As Will had been talking her brain had been running on parallel tracks: doctor friends she could call. Favors she could call in. Although she’s operating purely on instinct one thought has occurred to her that shocks her more than the others: _should she resign from her job?_ For all intents and purposes, Will is alone in the world and if worse comes to worst, he’ll need someone to take care of him. _Is that going to be me?_ She pushes the thought aside because she can't think like that now.

“I’m sorry,” Martin says.

“Thank you. Listen, I won’t be able to come out tonight. That’s what I came to tell you. I’m sorry.”

“I understand. Are you going out with him?”

She shakes her head. “I want to do some research on what he has, so …” She trails off.

“Okay.” He waits a beat. “Are you staying here … or going back to your place … or … “ He pauses. “To his hotel?”

“I’m going to stay here. He’ll probably go back to his hotel.”

“I’ll wait for you.”

“That’s okay… I’m not sure how long it’s going to take.”

“Why don’t you come over after, then?”

She stares at him. _What?_ _Behave as if this were just another Friday night? As if the entire universe didn’t just come crashing down? Impossible._

Everything in her world has contracted. Everything she was worried about twenty minutes ago is floating uselessly off into the distance and the only thing that matters now is Will. Of shepherding him through this, whatever this is. Somehow, she feels as if she is the only thing standing between him and the forces that would carry him off. But she can’t say that. Not to Martin. So she settles for what’s at the surface.

“Like I said: it might be late, and I don’t think I’d be very good company.”

“You don’t have to be.”

She shakes her head. “I need to go scan his test results,” she says, holding up the papers in her hand. “ … And … uh … start finding people to send them to. So we can get a second opinion.” She starts to move off without waiting for a reply but Martin stops her. “Can I help?”

She forces herself to turn back around because she owes him that. Although he’s being good and kind and supportive she just wants him to go away so she can get back to Will and devote every ounce of energy she has to saving him.

She gives him a forced smile. “No, thank you.”

“MacKenzie—I’m here if you need me.”

Her head clears for a moment and she looks at him. _Dear, lovely, sweet Martin_. “I know. Thank you. Good night.”

“Call me tomorrow?”

She looks at him blankly. “What? Uh, sure.”

She heads into the copy room next to Martin’s office. While she waits for the papers to scan, she looks down at her shoes and takes a deep breath, trying not to let the sob escape that’s threatening to be wrenched from her throat. Will might be dying. _Dying._ A world without him in it. How could such a world be endured? _Please, please_.

She places both hands on the copy machine and bends her head down and then she can’t help it.

She starts to sob.


	5. Chapter 5

Instantly, Martin appears beside her and it's the oddest compulsion, what she does next. He goes to gather her into his arms but she can feel Will's presence so strongly, even out here, that she can't let that happen: Will's magnetism is a force field around her heart that repels all threats. 

She holds her hands out, blocking Martin's path and he stands there, hurt and bewildered. She doesn't mean to hurt Martin, doesn't _want_ to hurt Martin, but everything has changed. The only thing that matters is waiting for her back in her office. She can’t think about Martin or be beholden to Martin because everything inside her is crying out for Will. 

“I’m sorry,” she tells him. “I can’t—”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I just—I have to send his test results out. I’m sorry. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

She rushes off as he stares after her.

She pushes open her office door and finds Will staring off into space. He looks up when she enters and when he sees her face he walks over to her and pulls her into his arms. And at that moment all she can think is, _This is where I belong_. _With you_. He’s home. Her home. And she loves him with all her heart.

“Mac,” he says into her hair. “Please don’t cry. God, I shouldn’t have come. I should have just—”

She pulls back to look at him. “What?” she says, wiping her eyes. “Let me read about it in the papers?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “I don’t want to hurt you. Any more than I already have.”

“You’re not. I’m glad you told me. In person. I wouldn’t have wanted to …” She trails off.

He looks at her searchingly. Although he has less than nothing to offer her at this point, he doesn’t want her to think the only reason he came here tonight was to tell her goodbye. Concealing the truth now, when they've surely come to the end of their road, would be a betrayal of everything they've meant to one another, wouldn't it? Maybe she'd want to know? It feels like she would. He would, if the roles were reversed.

It's that thought that makes his decision.

“I didn’t just come here to tell you I’m sick, Mac." 

Her heart hammers in her chest because he's wearing the same expression he was wearing when he showed up here tonight: tender. Loving. Affectionate. _Oh my God. Have you changed you mind?_

"For what it’s worth, I came to tell you that I never stopped—"

 _No, don't say it! Don't say it!_ Because she cannot, will not allow herself to be distracted. What he may or may not be about to say isn't going to get his test results sent out and the only thing that matters right now is buying him more time. 

She puts up a hand to silence him. “Let's not get ... distracted. We need to send out your test results." She takes a deep breath. "We can talk about the rest tomorrow. Maybe before we see the specialist.”

 _That's ... okay. Okay._ Once again she’s saved him from himself. What good would it do now to tell her he’s in love with her? When they can’t be together? When she’s seeing someone else, for Christ’s sake? _Fine. We’ll stick to the here and now and pretend the only reason I'm here is to wrap things up_. “Mac, you don’t have to do that and you don’t need to come with me tomorrow. I can handle it.”

She dismisses him. “You need someone with you who can take notes and ask the questions you don’t ask.”

“It isn’t necessary. And … if I’m being perfectly honest, I’d rather go alone. If I’m going to be told I’m going to drop dead in two months, I’d prefer it if there weren’t any witnesses.”

But she knows him too well. “You’re trying to protect me.”

“Why ruin your weekend?”

“Don’t fight me on this, Will. You’re not going to win. What time is your appointment?”

“Two.”

“Alright. It’ll take me a couple hours to do the research, so I’ll work on that tonight and we can meet up tomorrow morning.” She walks over to her desk and writes out her address on a piece of paper and hands it to him. “Come over at ten. I’ll make breakfast. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she says. “I have work to do. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He doesn't deserve her. He has never deserved her. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised she’s willing to upend her evening to toil on his behalf because she’s the most selfless person he’s ever known. The most loyal person he’s ever known (well, except for that one thing) and now that he’s pulled his head out of his ass he can’t believe he’d allowed himself to forget. Why the hell has he been such an idiot? “Mac, I’m not leaving. If you insist on staying, I’m staying, too. Which database do you want me to search?”

She hesitates. She’d rather do this alone because Will is—and worries about his future are—too big a distraction. Still, the more he knows about his condition the better. “I’ll take EMBASE,” she says. “You do MEDLINE.”

“Okay.” He takes his laptop out of his briefcase, walks to the couch and sits down. She gives him the wireless password and a set of keywords to search and he sets to work using ACN’s subscription. 

She goes back to her desk and is just about to look for her oncologist friend’s phone number when Martin pops his head into her office.

MacKenzie and Will both look up. “I’m just heading out,” Martin says, addressing MacKenzie. “Thought I’d see if you needed anything.”

“I think we’re okay, thank you.”

Martin hesitates. “MacKenzie, can I have a word?”

“Sure.” She looks at Will. “I’ll be right back.”

She follows Martin out into the empty bullpen. Although Martin has a sneaking suspicion he's losing ground he's not going to give up without a fight. He likes MacKenzie very much. Will McAvoy is an idiot who didn't know how good he had it and Martin is not going to let him ruin what might be a very good thing. “I just wanted to say you should come by later. It doesn’t matter how late.”

She stares at him. _No. That's impossible._ Her two worlds have collided and the only one that matters is in her office. It's a world of rich textures, glorious colors and profound emotions. This world, the one she's standing in right now, is paper-thin and only surface-deep. It hasn't touched her. Not yet. Martin is good and kind and maybe there could be something more ... someday ... but right now she doesn't need him.

She knows there's no rational explanation for what she’s about to say but everything inside her is telling her she needs to be free to pivot in response to Will ... wherever that may lead. She’s not entirely sure why Will is here but the hints he’s been dropping mean the barrier that’s been between them for the last few years might be gone, which means there’s a chance for them. And she needs to be free to take that as far as she can for as long as she can. Because she needs him and she suspects he needs her.

She motions Martin into an empty conference room and when he follows her in she closes the door behind them. She looks at him apologetically. “The thing is, Martin … I can’t predict what’s going to happen with Will. But … I need to be free when it does.”

He gives her a blank look. “Meaning?”

“Meaning … _this_ …” she says, gesturing between them. “ _Us_. Has to end.”

He stares at her, stunned. “What? Why?”

What can she possibly say that would make any sense to him or that would justify the vague outline of the plan that’s begun to take shape in her mind? She can’t rationalize it—even to herself—but in the end it comes down to this: the proof that her feelings for Martin are tepid at best walked through the door thirty minutes ago in the form of a tall American with dazzling blue eyes. It isn’t fair to Martin. She’s learned from the mistakes of the past; she should have been honest with Will about Brian in the beginning and she’s determined not to make the same mistake twice.

“Because he needs me.”

“As what? A nursemaid?”

“I don’t know yet. Look. I made a mistake with him a long time ago. I wasn’t honest about what was going on in my head and I should have been. It wasn’t fair to him and I don’t want to make that mistake again. Not with you. I care about you. I do. You are a lovely, wonderful man. But as much I’ve been trying to deny it, I still have feelings for him. Powerful feelings. And I have no business being involved with anyone else until I work through them.”

He waits a beat. “I see. May I offer you a word of advice?”

“Sure.”

“You just received terrible news and you’re not thinking clearly. Don’t blow up something with the potential to be really good for someone who—I’m sorry to be blunt—may not have a future. Think about what you’re doing, MacKenzie. I know you care about him and you want to make things better for him but I don’t think the man I saw out there would want you to sacrifice yourself on his behalf.”

“It’s no sacrifice. He’s been my best friend for eight years.”

“And much of that time you weren’t speaking. And he went out of his way to hurt you.”

She nods. Slowly. She can see the truth of what he’s saying. But Will needs her. She can’t just pretend that he doesn’t.

“None of that matters anymore.”

“Why?”

“Because he might be _dying,_ Martin. _Dying_.” She blinks rapidly, trying to get herself under good regulation. “I don’t give a damn about anything that happened in the past. The only thing that matters now— _the only thing_ —is doing whatever I can to make sure he has the best chance for the best possible outcome.”

“You think he’d do the same for you? Drop everything to be by your side?”

“I know he would.”

He takes a breath, starts to speak and then stops before deciding he has no choice but to go for the jugular. “But that isn’t quite true, is it?” he says slowly. She looks at him in confusion so he goes on. “Where was he when you got stabbed?”

She can’t fault him for his line of reasoning. She’d have felt the same thing—in fact, _had_ felt the same thing—until a month ago when her mother let the cat out of the bag. “It turns out he was with me. In Germany,” she tells him. “He made sure I had the best medical care possible and left before I woke up. I didn’t find out until a few weeks ago when my mother accidentally let it slip.”

She’d been stunned when her mother told her Will had shown up the day after the stabbing, terrified out of his mind. He’d arranged for the best doctors, the best room, the best everything, then sworn her parents to secrecy. After she’d gone back to the UK to recuperate, he’d insisted on receiving regular updates and when he’d begged them to keep that from her, too, her parents had been too grateful for his help to refuse him.

Martin sighs. “MacKenzie, think about what you’re doing. He’s not well and he lives in another country. How’s that going to work? Are you going to quit your job and run back to New York to take care of him?”

“I don’t know. I’ll do whatever he needs me to do.”

“And be whatever he needs you to be?”

She nods.

“And what of you? What do you need?”

She has no choice but to speak the unvarnished truth. “I need _him_ , Martin. In whatever way I can have him for as long as I can have him.”

Martin freezes for a moment, then slowly relaxes. “Consider yourself free, then. Good luck.”


	6. Chapter 6

Martin leaves and she makes her way back to her office. As she does, she pushes away the gnawing sensation that she may have just made a terrible, terrible mistake. Not because she’s madly in love with Martin but because she has a niggling feeling that no rational person would have jettisoned something with real potential in exchange for something tenuous at best.

But she shakes it off because it doesn’t matter. She’s set her course. Now she has only to follow it.

When she comes back Will has obviously take a break from his search and is standing by her desk, looking at a photo of her and the rest of the _News Night_ team. In it, she and Will are flanked by Charlie, Jim, Sloan, Kendra, Don, and Maggie, all of their faces relaxed and happy. She likes to look at it sometimes when she’s missing New York and when she does, she always forces herself to skate by Will’s face.

He puts the photo down. “Did you get everything squared away?” he asks.

She nods.

“Good. I was just looking at this—” he says, gesturing to the photo. “It’s nice that you keep it here.”

She takes a deep breath. “It makes me feel a little less homesick.”

He looks at her, his expression a little guilty. “Does that happen a lot?”

“Sometimes.”

He waits a beat. “How about your job? Are you happy here? Was it a good move? Overall?”

“I think so. It did what it was supposed to do.”

“Which was?”

“Cut the cord.”

He nods, but doesn’t say anything, so she goes on. “I miss the States, though. Everyone at ACN. Jim, especially.” _Not you_. She’s proud of herself: she did not single him out, even though he’s the one who’s usually uppermost in her mind—wondering how he is, who he might be dating (well, sleeping with, really), whether or not she crosses his mind between emails and voicemail messages and letters. Whether or not he ever thinks maybe, maybe he made a mistake.

“Jim’s not the most reliable source of gossip," she says. "Is everyone okay?”

“As far as I know.” 

“I don’t know why I’m asking you—you have even less interest in interpersonal relationships than Jim does.”

“I think that’s called self-defense.”

She gives him a tight smile. “Be that as it may,” she tells him. “It still leaves me high and dry.”

“Can’t get anything out of Maggie?”

She looks a little guilty. “We haven’t really spoken. Just a few emails here and there.” Maggie is a little too close to Will for comfort and the truth is, MacKenzie simply hadn’t wanted to be reminded.

“Well, it must be good being close to your family, at least.”

“It is,” she agrees. “I pop ‘round for dinner on the weekends.”

“That’s good. Your parents. Are they well?”

“Yes.” She gives him a strange look. “In fact, my mother told me something interesting a few weeks ago. She said she saw you in Germany. When I was in the hospital.”

Embarrassed, he looks down. “You weren’t supposed to know,” he says, more harshly than he intends.

“Don’t be angry with her. She didn’t mean to let it slip. She felt terrible that it did.”

“I’m not angry.” He exhales, defeated. “I just … I never wanted you to know.”

“Well, I wanted to thank you. For the room and for arranging for those specialists and for making sure I was looked after properly.”

“It was nothing.”

“It was a lot, Will. Particularly since you hated me at the time.”

“I didn’t hate you. I never hated you.”

She can’t help the bitterness in her voice. “’Could have fooled me.”

He looks at her with real regret. “I was angry with you, yes. But I never hated you.”

Impetuously, she reaches out to put her hand on his wrist, sending little jolts of electricity up his spine. “I wish you’d have stayed,” she tells him. “I wish I’d have known. It would have been a comfort to see you there.”

He shakes his head. “I figured you were better off not knowing. If you woke up and I was there and I was still angry—which I _was_ —it would only have hurt you.”

She concedes his point. “Maybe. It would have meant something to me, though. Knowing you cared enough to come.”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” he says stubbornly. “I wasn’t ready yet.”

 _Does that mean you’re ready now?_ But she doesn’t press him further.

“We should get back to work,” she says, dropping her hand.

He nods and heads back to the couch. She sits down at her desk, locates her oncologist friend Jack’s phone number and calls him. It takes less than five minutes for her to send him Will’s test results and when Jack promises to send them to specialists around the world, insisting on doing the legwork for her, she doesn’t argue. When she hangs up and relays the news to Will they stare awkwardly at one another, wondering what to say.

“Well, that was easy,” she says finally.

“That’s really nice of him. How can I repay him?”

“He’s a detective. He lives for this kind of thing. But I’ll think of something.”

“Okay.”

The silence hangs between them.

“Well … I guess I’ll say goodnight, then,” he tells her, standing up. “Let you get on with your evening.”

She stares at him. _What? You want to leave? NOW?_ Yes, she told him to do just that not thirty minutes ago, but that was only so she could get her head in the game. Now that the test results have been taken care of, now that they have some fourteen hours to kill until his appointment, she just wants him to stay (and to tell her this entire evening (and indeed the last nearly four years) have been some terrible, terrible mistake).

But she can’t say that because, as usual, there’s no room for _her_ feelings. No, she’s supposed to be cool and detached and perfectly in control and even in love with Martin just to spare Will the inconvenience of knowing how badly her heart aches every time she looks at him.

The dissonance enrages her, its intensity in direct proportion to her helplessness. The emotions swirl and coalesce inside her, threatening to burst forth and put the lie to her façade of equanimity. She has to let it out—somehow—so she devises a workaround: she may not be allowed to reveal her true feelings but she can snipe at him. It’s easy and familiar and will discharge a tiny bit of the negativity that’s threatening to consume her, even if only fraction of it. “Really? You’re just going to leave?” she snorts. “I should have expected that.”

He blinks but she won’t take it back because it’s his fault they’re in this situation. _His_. Not the illness, but the wasted time _._ It’s all so senseless. Such a fucking _waste_. He’s the other half of her soul and she knows damned well she’s the other half of his and now they’ll probably never get their happy ending. _Ever_. (Even if that happy ending was something she’d halfway managed to convince herself she no longer wanted an hour ago.) And now he’s going to abandon her again, leave her to sift through the wreckage of their lives _again_ , only this time with no hope for reconciliation. She doesn’t know what to do with her mind or the rest of her body but she’d like to use her hands to wring his neck.

“I didn’t mean …” he falters. “It’s not that late. I thought … you could still catch up with Martin … if you wanted to.”

_You are such an ass, Will! Such an ASS! How dare you break my heart again by telling me it wouldn’t bother you a bit if I went off with another man?_

Vibrating with anger, she gets up from her desk and goes to stand in front of him. “Why are you here, Will? You said it wasn’t just to tell me goodbye. What was it, then?”

He doesn’t know what he did to set her off but maybe it’s for the best. He knows her anger. He can deal with her anger. Far better than he could ever deal with her anguish.

He stares at her, obviously conflicted.

“It was to tell you …it was to ask you …” He sighs and looks away. “I don’t know what to do here, Mac.” And then he’s gazing at her with such intensity she almost wants to look away. “Do I tell you what I was planning to tell you before I got my test results so we can tie everything up with a neat bow … or … are some things better left unsaid?”

“I am _so tired_ of wasting time, Will,” she says through gritted teeth. “So very, very tired of wasting _time!_ So, if you’ve got something to say to me, I’d appreciate it if you’d say it. _Before I lose what’s left of my mind_.”

He acquiesces.“Okay.” If that’s what she wants, that’s what he’ll give her. Well, part of it, maybe. He doesn't know exactly how much he should disclose. He should err on the side of kindness, he knows that. But what would that mean in this situation? Would it be kinder for her to know _all_ of it ... everything he'd been planning to say to her ... or only how sorry he is? In any case, how is he going to decide?

He supposes he'll just have to follow her lead.

“Do you want to do it here?” he asks her, looking around. “You don’t seem to have any Kleenex and I’m pretty sure I’m going to need at least a box. Maybe we should go somewhere better stocked?”

“Let’s go to my place. I happen to have two brand new boxes.”

“Okay. I’d like to see your apartment.” He reaches out his hand to hers. “Thanks for making time for me tonight, Mac. I appreciate it.”

She nods, not trusting herself to speak. She gathers her things and he follows her out the door. When they get to the middle of the newsroom he stops, looking around, as if committing the place to memory. This is yet another place he’ll likely never see again. It’s such an odd perspective to have, and it makes him realize how much he’s taken for granted. And nothing more than the woman standing in front of him.

“Everything okay?” she asks.

“Yeah, just … looking around.”

Reading his thoughts, she reaches out and squeezes his hand. “This isn’t the last time, Will.”

He nods and follows her out.

They’re silent on the way to her apartment. Ordinarily, she’d take the tube, but the darkness of Will’s revelation makes her want to shut out the rest of the world. Inside the taxi there is only him and her fear for his future.

When they arrive in front of her building, he gets out first and extends a hand to help her out. The cab driver takes their bags from the boot of the car and he follows her into the building, up the elevator and into her small condo. His heart aches when he recognizes some of the things she used to have in her office because it reminds him that she really does live here now and it’s all his fault.

“Would you like a drink?” she asks, when they get inside. “The usual?”

“No, thanks,” he tells her.

“Are you hungry?” she replies. “We can order something.”

“Nothing for me, thanks, but you should eat. If I know you, you haven’t had anything since breakfast.”

“You’re right, but … I don’t have much of an appetite at the moment.”

“Me either.”

“Because you’re nervous?”

How did he ever forget that she knows him so well? “Yeah.”

“Why?’

“Because I have so much to say to you and I don’t know where to begin.”

She motions for him to sit down on the couch and when he obeys she goes to sit in the chair across from him. He gestures for her to sit down beside him, so she does. She waits for him to say something, anything, but he’s a mass of indecision.

 _Do I tell her? Should I tell her? What would be the kinder thing?_ He simply can’t decide. _Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._

As the seconds pass and he makes no move to speak she clenches her fists in frustration. She can practically see the ticking stopwatch hanging over their heads. _We’re wasting time, Will. YOU’RE wasting time. As usual. Just say it, damn you, say whatever it is that you’ve got to say to me. Say it, say it. Please say it. Or I’ll go mad._

But no.

Nothing.

 _Do I have to do EVERYTHING?_ Restraining her temper once again, she sighs. “How about Germany? You said you weren’t ready yet. Then. Does that mean you’re ready now?”

 _Okay. That I can do. I can talk about that._ _Sort of. After I tell you how sorry I am._ Again. Yes, he already told her that but he feels compelled to say it again. Over and over and over again if need be because he IS sorry. Desperately sorry that it took him so long to pull his head out of his ass. As he looks at her beautiful face he would do anything to turn back time. To sleep on the couch the night she made her confession (two at the most), and to have done whatever was required to put it behind them the next day.

“Yeah,” he says. “But first, I want to tell you again that I am so sorry, Mac. For what I did to you.”

She resists the urge to roll her eyes. “You didn’t do anything to me, Will. I deceived you and you broke up with me. You were perfectly within your rights.” That’s the rational, clinical description of events, anyway. Even so, she doesn’t want to go over it again because it _doesn’t matter_. Not anymore.

But he is, as usual, completely lost in his own world. _Damn you for being so clueless, Will. So obtuse. So completely immune to the fact of the matter. To the REALITY of the matter._ _For God’s sake, just get on with it. Please!_

Mercifully, he does, but he doesn’t take it in the direction she’d hoped. “I ignored you for three years. And I didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet when you came to ACN.”

God, she doesn’t want to get into this part. It hurts and makes her remember and she doesn’t want to do that. Not now. Not when they may have so little time left. She feels as if she’s an actor in a play, forced to play her part as scripted, to keep up the appearance of being calm even though it feels like every negative emotion she’s ever experienced has come roaring back and is threatening to drown her. She’s got one leg dangling over the precipice and she knows that one wrong word from him will send her tumbling over the edge. _Can you feel it?_ she wants to say. _Can you feel me?_ _Please, Will. Please. Please stop talking about what no longer matters and just tell me what I need to hear. Tell me that what we had was real. Tell me you still love me and need me and want me because I need you so much. I love you so much. Even now. Even now._ She hates herself for being so needy, so pathetic, but there’s no getting away from it.

But she does have her part to play, so she tries to force her feelings into their customary corset. Besides, there’s no guarantee he’s going to say what she wants him to say, and she still has her pride. A little of it, anyway.

“No, you didn’t,” she concedes. “And it hurt. But I’ve never blamed you for it. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. What's done is done.”

He doesn’t know what she’s thinking but he doesn’t miss her tense expression and when he reaches out and wordlessly wraps his fingers around hers, the familiarity of the gesture brings her anger down and tears to her eyes. He’s always been able to sense when her head’s about to fly off, always ready to lend a warm, steadying hand, even during their estrangement.

Although he doesn’t want to hurt her, he needs to say what he’s about to say because he needs her to know … after … that he knew the full extent of his culpability. So that whenever she looks back on their relationship in the future she’ll always know that he’d known much of it was his fault.

“Maybe,” he says. He feels selfish because what he’s about to say is as much for his benefit as hers, so he can set down a little of the guilt he’s carrying. “But … I need to say this to you, MacKenzie. Please let me say it. Please let me apologize for ..." he trails off, guilt about the past and despair over the future roiling his stomach.

She gives an exasperated huff, her patience at an end. _Dear God, will you please stop revisiting the past and get on with it? Tell me something I can use, something that will make a difference NOW. Stop talking about things that can’t be changed!_

 _“For what?”_ she says, her irritation on full display.

He blinks but doesn’t comment on her obvious annoyance because he has to get through this, his checklist of everything he wants to say to her. Well, not everything, but the things he's at liberty to disclose.

“What I did wasn’t benign—I actively tried to hurt you.”

Her anger flares again but just as suddenly dissipates. The expression on his face is tender and open and no matter what she feels about what happened between them she can’t deny the other fact of their relationship, the important one, that it just doesn’t fucking matter because they’re meant for each other.

“Yes. You did, but … I’ve always known where that came from. We were happy together.” She gives him a long look and her expression softens before growing pensive again. “Some might say … ridiculously happy together. And as far as you were concerned, I destroyed our lives.”

He nods and brings her hand up to kiss her palm. “We were that … weren’t we?” he asks.

“Ridiculously happy together?”

He nods.

“We were.”

He’s silent for a moment and looks down as he feels his eyes well with tears. When he looks up again her heart clenches in her chest. “I _was_ really happy with you, MacKenzie.”

“I know,” she says, a lump forming in her throat. “So was I.”

“Which is what makes how I reacted so … self-defeating. I could have tried to put what happened into context. I could have tried see it as a bump in our road instead of the defining moment of our relationship.”

She startles. _What?_ Did _those_ words actually come out of _your_ mouth? She’s utterly bewildered. Is it his illness that’s brought him to this realization? The full moon? What? And then, despite the precariousness of their situation she can feel her anger start to build again. She can’t forget how coldly he’d cast her off this last time. He’d been so wholly without feeling. There’s been no doubt in his expression then, no evidence of any internal struggle. He’d cast her out without looking back. Twice. And now, as much as she wants to believe it, as much as she’s _dying_ to believe it, he expects her to believe he’s suddenly had a change of heart? Worse, his statement reminds her that—as usual—he’s in the driver’s seat: he acts and all she’s permitted to do is _re_ act. But though the narrow confines of her role infuriate her, getting angry—or rather expressing her anger—is going to get her nowhere. So, she tries to keep her temper in check.

“Is that all of it? Is that everything you wanted to say to me?” she says, resisting the urge to tap her feet.

“No. I wanted to apologize for one more thing: for ruining the life we had together. I'm so sorry, Mac. I'm so sorry.”

 _What? Oh, now you’ve gone too far_.

“Did I miss something?” she exclaims. “I’m the one who ruined our lives, Will. According to you.”

“I was wrong.”

But she cannot, will not let him rewrite history. Not even now. “I stood in your office not four months ago and you told me … well … I won’t repeat what you told me because you were there, but let’s just say you thought the dissolution of our life together was all on me. And you were pretty damned sure of yourself.”

“Every self-righteous ass is sure of himself, Mac.”

“Either you were lying then or you’re lying now. Which is it?”

“Neither. I believed what I told you then. But a few days ago I realized I’ve never been more wrong about anything in my life. _That’s_ what I wanted to tell you. And also that … and that …”

Should he tell her? He wants to tell her. To let her know just how much he loves her, how much he has _always_ loved her, even when he was pretending he didn’t. But should he? Would it be cruel of him to tell her?

_Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._

He vacillates. Then again, maybe … maybe … she’d want to know? Maybe later … after … it would mean something for her to know?

The wellspring of emotion inside him makes his decision for him: he loves her. And he has no choice but to tell her because she’s sitting right next to him, perhaps for the last time.

“I wanted to tell you that I love you. I never stopped.”

The words hang between them and he can’t tell whether she’s about to rip his face off or kiss him (he wouldn’t be surprised either way).

_“What?”_

“I love you. It’s always been you, Mac. _Always_.”

She’s speechless. For a moment, anyway. And then she’s enraged, even though he’s just said everything she’s waited four years for him to say. She has no earthly idea why his declaration so angers her except that it demonstrates the fact that even now he holds all the power in their relationship. He decided to cast her off, leaving her to suffer the consequences, and now he’s decided that oops, he made a mistake, he didn’t really mean it, only now it’s too late for them. Once again she’s at his mercy, only this time she’s at the mercy of his illness, something over which she has absolutely no control and which she can never hope to influence. Although she knows he doesn’t deserve her anger—not for his illness—she wants to lash out at something so badly she can feel her hands balling into fists. If she can’t find some outlet for her anger she’ll explode.

“The woman you loved is a pipe-dream, remember?” she snaps.

“The pipe-dream was the way I interpreted what happened. Not you. And that’s all on me.”

Unaware of her thoughts (which enrages her still further given that he used to know her so well), he rubs her palm with his thumb.

“I’m sorry I hurt you. I couldn’t hear what you were telling me then. But I hear you now. And the reason I still came—even after I got my test results—is that I wanted you to know that. So that you’d always know. After. If you'll just let me explain, you'll see ..."

"I already see. And what I see is a man whose affections are unreliable." She gets to her feet to stand before him. “Why the _fuck_ did it take you so long to get here, Will!?” she thunders. “I took another _job_. I moved to another _country_. And now you’re sick and it’s probably too late for usl” she cries. “How could you do that to me? How could you do that to _us_?”

He stands up and gathers her into his arms. “I’m sorry, Mac. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t before. I just couldn’t.”

She’s breathing heavily now but she allows herself to be calmed until she’s overcome with a renewed burst of anger and shoves him back down on the couch.

“Explain it to me. Explain how you got from there to here.”

He looks at her sheepishly. “I realized something … I realized you’re not a pod person.”

“A what?”

“A pod person. An impostor I couldn’t trust who looked exactly like the woman I loved. That’s what I called you. In my head.”

_Ouch._

“… But I was wrong. You’re you. The same you you’ve always been. What you did was just a thing you did, right? It wasn’t emblematic of who you are. It was one crappy thing you did in a long line of wonderful things you did. I just couldn’t see it. I’m so sorry, Mac. For being so blind for so long that I couldn’t see what was right in front me. But I see everything now. I see you now. I didn’t before. Not for the longest time.”

 _And now it’s too late._ _Damn you!_

“And just how did you come to this realization?”

He hesitates. “I found that door you told me about. And … a therapist to help me walk through it.”

She’s silent for a moment as she processes his words. And then, finally: “You did it without me. You did it without me when I _begged_ you to do it together. To work through it _together._ ”

He has no idea why doing it without her was a crime (and frankly, neither does she, except that it’s yet another decision he made without her, another decision that underscores the truth of the matter, which is that nothing she’s ever wanted or needed has ever meant anything to him), but when has he ever understood her reasoning—recently, anyway?

“Yes.” He holds his hands out in surrender. “I’m sorry.”

“You keep saying that,” she says. “Too bad it doesn’t mean _fuck. all_.”

“Mac, please—”

“Of course, it’s just like you to do it that way,” she mutters. “You do everything on your own timetable, don’t you? And the hell with everyone else.”

“I couldn’t—”

 _Oh, no you don’t. Don’t you dare._ She holds her hand up to silence him. “Don’t say that. Don’t lie. You could have. You chose not to. Because what I thought and what I felt and what I said and what I needed weren’t important enough to you to make you reconsider your position. What prompted you to walk through that door, Will, huh? Did you miss me? Did absence make the heart grow fonder?”

“Mac …”

“…or was it just because you wanted to _fuck. me. over._ one last time?"

Her accusation makes absolutely no sense—to either one of them—but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that there is, as usual, no room for her feelings. No, she’s just supposed to shut up and be satisfied with whatever crumbs he deigns to throw her way. But she’s _not_ some goddamned pigeon on a park bench. She’s a full-grown woman with needs and hopes and dreams and opinions that he has no right to trample on. He had no right to spend years trying to gaslight her into thinking that what she knew in her bones to be true, that they were meant for each other, was a pipe-dream. He just admitted she was right, so why the fuck did he waste four years of their lives by ignoring her input? Once upon a time he’d have paid attention to what she was telling him because once upon a time he’d respected her opinion. Because once upon a time they’d been _equals_. In every sense of the word. They could go toe-to-toe on any subject with no telling who might be the victor. But that was then and this is now and it simply _isn’t fair_. It isn’t _fair_ that his pigheadedness and obstinacy cost them years of happiness. 

She wants to throttle him but the thing is, he’s equally pissed. He may have been an idiot but he came by it honestly: he had the courage of his convictions every step of the way.

He gets to his feet.

“No! I love you," he exclaims. "As I have _always_ loved you. I didn’t always want to, but I _always_ have.”

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it.”

“I believed I was right. I believed that you never loved _me_. But the therapist helped me realize I’d been doing it to myself. That I’d been torturing myself. And that I could—if I wanted—just _stop_. Then I thought about what you said before you left … that you _did_ love me and that what we had wasn’t a lie. And I can’t explain it, but suddenly, the two yous I had in my mind, the ones I’d been keeping separate, were united. And that was that.”

She starts to pace. “Fuck, Will! _Fuck, fuck, fuck_!” It feels as though she’s got ants crawling all over her skin and every muscle in her body is taut as steel. “It isn’t fair. It isn’t _fair_. I have _loved_ you and I have _waited_ for you … for _years_. And you tell me this now? When it’s too late?”

He stares at her as he absorbs the weight of her words. They're a confirmation of his deepest fears, about whether it was morally right to show up here tonight and reveal what was in his heart. He'd known that it wasn't. Intellectually, he'd known that it wasn't, but he let his emotions get the better of him.

_I had no right to tell her. It was selfish of me to tell her. God, I'm an ass._

He walks to where she’s standing, guilt etched in his features. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have told you. I thought maybe you’d want to know. That it would mean something to you … after. But I shouldn’t have—what possible good could it do? I was an _idiot_ —I _am_ an idiot. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He turns away from her and punches one of his palms with his fist.

But she knows all too well what’s about to happen. He’s about to go off, he's about to go down, down, down into what _he_ feels, to get lost in his own musings and recriminations and to hell with her or what’s happening right this instant.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she says, shaking with rage. She steps around to stand in front of him, forcing him to face her. Although she’s just finished declaring he’d done nothing to her that's only true if he still believes he made the right call. If he doesn't, if he wants to take it back now, if he's admitting that he was wrong, he _did_ do something to her: he wasted the last four years of her life. That understanding, her anger at her own impotence and the continued power differential in their relationship compels her to lay it all at his feet.

“Don’t you dare use this as an excuse to wallow in self-pity, Will. This is about _me_. What you did to _me_. Breaking up with me. Ignoring me for three years. Letting me move to another _country_. Wasting so much fucking _time_.” Her hands clench into fists and she rejoices in the sensation of her fingernails digging into her flesh. It takes every ounce of restraint she has not to leap at him or smash everything in the apartment. “I _hate_ what you did to me, Will, I _hate_ it, I _hate_ it!” she cries.

She’s so angry he wouldn’t be surprised if she slapped him but he pulls her against his chest anyway, rocking her as she cries. “I’m sorry, honey, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She can barely take a breath and it feels as if she’s going to choke on the pain. It’s all just too much. She wrests herself from his grasp and steps away. Tears leak from her eyes and run rivers down her cheeks and then she levels a look at him that’s so full of anguish and loss his heart seizes in his chest.

“But I love _you_ , Will,” she sobs. “So much, so much. And now it’s too late _._ Now it’s too _late_.”

She claps her hands over her mouth as she sobs and sobs some more.

He takes a step, pulls her into his arms and kisses her hair, holding her, rocking her, murmuring in her ear. “I know, sweetheart, I know, I know.”

Eventually she quiets and he continues to rock her. He’s got his face buried in her hair and his arms wrapped tightly around her back and he wonders how the fuck he’d forgotten that the greatest joy he’d ever known was when his arms were around her.

As her rage subsides she begins to think of how much time they might have left. How best to use it. What will be most important to her—after. And in the end she decides she needs to know all of it. What he’d been thinking. What he’d been planning before he got his terrible, terrible news.

She pulls back to look at him. “Is that everything you wanted to say to me? What were you planning? What were you hoping for? Before you found out?”

He exhales softly. “Are you sure you want to know, Mac? My days are probably numbered and you’re seeing someone. What good will it do?”

“I need to know, Will. I need to know what would have happened if you hadn’t gotten those fucking test results.” She wipes her eyes and rubs her hands on her skirt. “And I’m not seeing anyone. Not anymore.”

“What?”

“Martin is no longer in the picture.”

“Since when?”

“An hour ago.”

“Why? Jesus, Mac. I didn’t come here to make trouble.”

That’s what he says aloud, anyway, even though _Thank God_ is what he’s thinking. And then, _What kind of monster are you, rejoicing in the fact that she cut someone loose with whom she might actually have a future_? He’s a terrible, terrible person and he makes himself sick.

“You shouldn’t have done that," he tells her. "I’m not …” _worth it_ , he wants to say, but doesn't. He trails off.

It’s a tiny utterance, inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a match thrown on the pile of kindling that is her self-control.


	7. Chapter 7

She gets right into his personal space.

"Are you so _fucking_ clueless you really don’t know what it does to me when you act like you’d be okay with seeing me with another man? It hurts me more than anything you’ve ever done!”

That’s probably not true, but at this moment she can’t remember anything that’s made her feel worse.

She grabs his collar because she’s unraveling now, unspooling rapidly now and she’s powerless against it. She has love in her heart the likes of which he can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which he would not believe. If she cannot satisfy the one, she will indulge the other. “You know what I want to hear, Will? I want to hear that the thought of another man putting his hands on me makes your blood boil,” she hisses. “That the thought of another man kissing me or making love to me makes you _insane_ with jealousy. _That’s_ what I want to hear from you. So if you can’t say that, then for God’s sake do me a favor and _keep your fucking mouth shut_!”

She feels like an out-of-control freight train rushing through the darkness as it heads toward a washed-out bridge. The train can't slow down; it can only speed up. She has no idea where all this is coming from but it feels so good to let it go, to expel some of the rage that’s consuming her, to spew her poison onto him because it's the only thing standing between her and an agonizing grief that is about to swallow her whole. There's something peculiarly gratifying about shouting in a blind rage until one's words run out, but even as the words leave her lips she knows it's a lie: she denounces him with her speech even as her heart calls him tender names. _I love you so much, Will. How can you be dying? How?_

The impotent rage that’s pouring out of her is pouring onto him and it seems to strip off a layer of his emotional crust, a crust that had prevented him from knowing something about himself: that he had been heartless about her pain, indeed had thrown it in her face instead of owning his part in it. But does she _actually_ think he'd been unaffected by Martin's existence? By the fact that he himself had been usurped, even though it was all his fault? _You think I didn't want to tear that asshole limb from limb when he touched you? That I didn't want to tear YOU limb from limb? Even though I knew I had no right? You don't know shit, MacKenzie. You don't know SHIT!_ The knowledge that he did it all to himself and that he will never be able to make it right, not now, not _ever_ , triggers something deep inside him, some primal, grief-stricken rage inside him and he gives himself permission to let it go.

Because he's seen this show before. He knows exactly what she wants from him.

He grabs her wrists and pulls her hard against him, snakes one hand across her back, reaches up, grabs the back of her head and kisses her _hard_. It’s a bruising kiss, so violent she’s surprised she doesn’t taste blood on her lips. He forces his tongue into her mouth and she sucks on it hard, so hard he’s afraid she’s going to tear it off. The kiss is brutal. Nothing like the one they’d shared in his office. This one is all teeth and heat and fear and tongue and desperation and suddenly they’re clawing at each other’s clothes and ripping them off.

“You want to know what it did to me when he put his hands on you?" he grunts into her mouth as he tears her blouse off her shoulders, sending buttons clattering across the floor. "When he touched something that belongs to _me_? I wanted to kill him, Mac. I wanted to _kill_ him. I wanted to kill _you_. Is that what you want to hear? Huh? Is that what you want to hear?” She doesn’t answer and he grabs her ass hard and pulls her roughly against him. “Answer me, goddammit. Is that what you want to hear?”

“Yes,” she says angrily. “Yes. Tell me, Will. _Tell me_.”

"Oh, I'll tell you," he says, yanking her shirt out of her skirt. He's drawn to the delicate skin beneath her ear like a moth to a flame and as he nuzzles and nips at her earlobe, covering her skin with delicious kisses, the heat of his touch spreads frissons of heat throughout her body. She's unable to stifle a moan as presses his arousal against her, stoking a fire that is already burning out of control. He begins kissing her jaw and down her neck and she closes her eyes as his burning kisses continue across her collarbone. She feels his tongue dip into the hollow of her neck and she thrills at the helpless moan that escapes him as he tilts his head to delve even deeper. She stands there, frozen with pleasure as he continues his assault.

His kisses send delicious pinpricks of sensation up her spine until she feels his fingers grip the back of her head, immobilizing her. And then she hears his voice, low and menacing. "Know this, MacKenzie," he whispers, his breath hot in her ear. "If I had a hope in hell of beating this thing I'd have made you sorry you let him touch you."

She brings her hands between them and shoves him hard, causing him to stumble backward.

" _Bastard,_ " she tells him, eyes blazing. He regains his footing and advances on her, a murderous look in his eyes but she'll stand her ground. She won't back down.

"You threw me away, Will," she tells him. "You did this, not me."

She stands there, heart racing as she tries to anticipate his next move and then she watches, as if from faraway, as he reaches both hands out to her. He does it slowly, slowly and then he's grabbing both shoulders and pulling her against him. 

"You think I give a shit?" he jeers, staring down into her face. "That it was my fault? That it was all on me? I _don't_. Because it doesn't change the fact that you belong to me, MacKenzie. No one else. _Ever_. And if you ever forget that again, I swear to God, I will _haunt_ you."

He has no idea where the hell that came from since a) it's ridiculous and b) it's impossible and c) he only wants her to be happy, even if it's with someone else. But his role in this play is just as prescribed as hers and his only job is to give her what she wants. Which seems to be this. If her response to his threat is any indication. She grabs the back of his head, stands on tiptoes, presses her lips against his and shoves her tongue in his mouth.

His tongue meets hers stroke for stroke but he does it a little more gently this time, a little more lovingly, only she doesn't respond in kind: she kisses him roughly and he's not entirely happy about it because that's not how he wanted this to go. But her eyes are burning with anger and pain and need and he thinks maybe she needs this this way right now. They used to do this sometimes, have angry sex that would catapult them to the rafters, leaving peace and satiety in its wake and the way she’s acting now, kissing him with desperation and heat and fury, is exactly the way she used to act then. In the end, he decides if that's the way his part is written, that's the way he'll play it. _Fuck it._

He pulls her against him—hard—and nips and sucks at her lower lip as he starts trying to work her bra because he needs to see those beautiful breasts one more time before he fucking _dies_. Because he’s _dying_. Who’d have thunk it? And then he sees the scar. It’s under her ribs and it's three inches long, puckered and pink. It had been under her hospital gown in Germany, so he'd never seen it (he'd only seen the reproach in her parents' eyes).

 _Jesus Christ_. _I did that to you. I sent you away and you almost DIED. God, I'm a prick. Such a prick. Such a fucking prick!_

He has to make it up to her. Somehow. Some way. But like this? By ripping her clothes off? He looks into her eyes which are still full of fire and fury and he knows he'll give her whatever she wants. Whatever she needs. And if this is the way she wants it, so be it.

He finally figures out how to work the goddamned clasp on her bra and he has to restrain himself to keep from ripping it off because he’s not so far gone he doesn’t worry about hurting her. Finally, it’s off and then he’s unzipping her skirt, yanking it down her legs and throwing it across the room.

She’s never had so much trouble with a belt in her life as she’s having with his, but she can’t get it out of the buckle. Eventually he grows tired of her ineffectual fumbling so he shoves her hands away, undoes the buckle, rips the belt from his pants and throws it in the direction of her discarded shirt.

His hands find the back of her head again and he’s kissing her and she’s trying to get his zipper undone and then she’s pulling his pants and boxers down his legs _hard_. The elastic digs into his thighs and he knows he’s going to have a rash tomorrow.

“Easy! Fuck!” he exclaims.

She gets his shirt off and he steps out of his pants and kicks them away and soon he discovers the brutal tugging down of his pants was no accident because she’s _pissed_ at him: he knows it when her fingernails score his chest, leaving hot trails of fire in his skin.

“Jesus!” he erupts.

He grabs her wrists so hard she’s sure there _will_ be bruising but she doesn’t give a fuck because she’s trying to goad him into something, trying to provoke him into _something_ that will allow her to forget, just for a moment, the nightmare in which they find themselves.

His eyes grow dark with rage. “You want to play it this way, MacKenzie? I’ll play it this way,” he says, and then he’s dragging her down the hallway, literally tugging her down the hallway, his hand gripping hers tightly as she trails along, trying to keep up with him. He kicks open every door they pass and only stops when he sees a room with a bed in it. He pulls her around in front of him, puts a hand on her back and shoves her toward the bed so hard she almost trips. Then he’s behind her, shoving her down on her back and ripping her panties down her legs and tossing them on the floor. She opens her legs and he gets between them, breathing heavily as he hovers over her and before she can protest he grabs both her wrists and raises them above her head. Then he places both wrists in one of his hands and pins her to the bed. 

“Is this what you want?” he asks as he takes himself in his other hand. He’s not referring to his dick but to the manner in which he will bury it inside her. Does she want it angry or does she want it soft and slow?

She stares at what he’s holding in his hand, grateful now for the fact that her newfound fear of the dark means she has a timer that turns on the lights in her bedroom. She doesn’t remember him being quite so … _big_ … but the answer to his question is an emphatic yes. She wants this interlude to proceed exactly as it began: with darkness and rage because she’s full of it. And she needs to let it out.

“Yes,” she says urgently. “Yes, damn you, _yes_.”

_Have it your way._

He fumbles around between them and when he feels her entrance he has to restrain himself to keep from plunging into her brutally because although he has her permission he’s not a small man and it’s always been a challenge for her to take him. He gives a few experimental, tiny thrusts but it isn’t long before her arousal helps him slide home and when he does she thinks she might literally die from pleasure. He feels so good, this feels _so right_. 

She fights to lift her head to his, desperate to kiss him, to taste him, to feel his mouth on hers. "Let go of my hands!" she says urgently. "Let them _go_!"

He obeys and she grabs the back of his head and jerks his mouth down to hers. She nurses his tongue, smashing their faces together because she wants to get as close to him as she possibly can, to inhale his breath, to taste him, to devour him. She wants to be _inside_ him, to feel his blood coursing through her veins, to feel his heart in her chest. _I love you, Will. God, I love you._ _How can you be dying? How?_ A tsunami of grief waits just outside this moment and each time it creeps closer she drags her conscious mind away from it by trying to focus only on the physical sensations, on the absolute joy of being so close to him again. But the darkness keeps inching closer, keeps trying to wrap its tentacles around her neck and drag her down into the abyss. Each time she's about to be pulled under she kisses him harder or wraps her legs around him more tightly or clutches him more resolutely, defending herself against the dragon by getting as close to him as she can.

He begins to move, slowly at first, wanting to give her time to get used to him, but it's not enough, not nearly enough: she needs it rough and hard and deep and steady because she wants an external manifestation of the agony inside her. She begs him not to hold back, to give her everything he has. "Please, Billy, please. Harder, faster, deeper. I need it. I need you. Please, please." 

He reaches between them to touch the bundle of nerves at the center of her being and then he gives himself over to the instinctual, primal, primitive urgings of his body. Her tongue is probing in time with his thrusts and the intimacy of that movement, the way they’re joined in every way possible—in parallel—sends jolts of electricity up his spine. _So good._ _You taste so good_ , he thinks. _So sweet._ Like warmth and sunshine and pure happiness. God, it feels good to be inside her again, to be this close to her again. So right. So perfectly, perfectly right. His heart is beating so fast he’s afraid he might have a heart attack and his ears are buzzing and he can’t think, he can only feel and what he feels is desperation that soon she will be lost to him _forever_.

 _Oh God, oh God_. _Mac, Mac, I love you. I love you._ And then he’s overcome with rage once more. Not at her but at himself for dying and for being such a Grade A, colossal asshole that he let the best thing that ever happened to him get away. That he’s wasted the last four years of his life being pissed and throwing a tantrum when he could have had _this_ , when he could have had _her_ , the only things he has ever needed or that have ever mattered to him. And now it’s too late. He redoubles his efforts, methodically, precisely, expertly trying to take her higher and higher because even though it will never be enough he wants to give her _something_ , some tiny fraction of the pleasure she has always, always given him.

She can feel herself spiraling towards the edge and she grabs his ass, trying to force him more deeply inside her and then she’s gone, borne out on a wave of ecstasy so powerful she thinks her heart might stop. He rides her through her climax, coaxing every last drop of pleasure from it, wringing it out of her. As she stares into his eyes, sated and profoundly grateful, a new incantation fills her mind as she senses his climax drawing near: _Please let there be a baby. Please, please._ It’s an insane idea, but if this is the end, she must have some part of him, something that will live on, a physical manifestation of him and their love.

As he moves within her, images from their life together flash in his mind. Of loving her and being loved by her. Of her, the woman she actually _is_ , the one he’d deluded himself into believing had never existed and at that moment he knows no greater fool than him has ever lived because the woman who’s clinging to him, the woman who’s whimpering beneath him _is_ her, the one who made him feel more love than anyone ever had. He threw her away and for what? So he could cling to his wounded pride?

She keeps kissing him, a probing, fire-fueled sensation that makes him feel as if his head is about to detach from his body and when he finally chances a look into her eyes and sees the deep, abiding love she has always had for him it triggers a detonation in his spine and he explodes, shouting her name and crying out that he loves her as she clings to him. He continues to move, pressing into her with deep, powerful thrusts, needing to get as close to her as he can, for as long as he can. When he finally stills on top of her she rubs her hands down his back, soothing his shuddering frame. Despite his despair over all the wasted time the sensation of satiety throughout his body and her fingers on his skin make him wish this moment would never end.

He lifts his head. “I’ve been so stupid, Mac,” he murmurs, gazing into her eyes. “So stupid. I thought what happened was more important than this but it isn’t. Nothing is. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Shhhh,” she says, smoothing his hair back from his forehead and pressing a delicate kiss to his lips.

As he lays there, his eyes closed and his forehead resting against hers, he wonders if she knows just how much he loves her, how much he has always loved her, even when he was pretending he didn't. How he would do anything to _not_ be dying right now because he isn't ready to die. Not now that he's pulled his head out of his ass, not now when he could have a future with her.

He raises his head so he can look at her, so he can bathe in the glory of being so close to her again. Her eyes are closed and he'd forgotten what it was like, this feeling of wholeness, of completion. On the one hand, he knows it's all pheromones and biology, that his body is simply producing chemicals because it recognizes her as a compatible mate, but he's never felt this bond with anyone else. He's loved it and hated it in equal measure but he can't deny the fact of it now. He wants to revel in it for as long as he can, but would that be fair to her?

Of course not. Because he's going to die.

They lay together in silence until the need to sleep creeps over them and her last sight before surrendering to slumber is his dazzling blue eyes which are gazing at her with all the love and tenderness she thought she’d never see again.

The past has been laid to rest.

Now, there is only to find out what the future holds.


	8. Chapter 8

She dreams of sailing towards him, towards joy, but he’s never in the room with her—only near, or across the way—like those rooms full of gaiety one sees from the street, or the gaiety in the street one sees from a window.

Wakefulness comes upon her in fits and starts. She is propelled to the surface by some unknown, mysterious force and then dragged down again by something grasping and hidden. She’s slightly troubled by the sensation of something warm resting on her abdomen but there’s something calming about the heaviness of it. Reassuring. Seconds pass, maybe minutes, and when her eyelids flutter against the bright, mid-morning sunlight she turns away from it, squinting, wishing she’d had the good sense to draw the blinds. The unidentified object behind her shifts but she isn’t alarmed; rather, she pushes against it to test it, to see if it will hold. It does. And now there is something hard pressing against her bottom. Her bare bottom. Something familiar but out of place. She draws a breath when the object on her abdomen starts to move. It crosses the flat plane of her stomach, skates up her side and traverses the hard contours of her rib cage to cup her breast. Gentle fingers caress her nipple, sending delicious pinpricks of sensation throughout her body and she twists her head to look over her shoulder to find Will staring back at her. Smiling. His expression tender and open. _Am I dreaming?_ If she is, she doesn’t want to wake up.

And then it all comes flooding back. _Oh God._

"Hey," he says softly, kissing her bare shoulder. His fingers slide back down to her belly to curve between her and the mattress and he uses his forearm to pull her tightly against his body. Pressing his nose into the back of her neck, he inhales deeply.

“Hey,” she answers as his lips move across her skin.

Roused from her stupor by his proximity, she twists her body to face him and hooks one pale thigh over his hip to drag him closer. His arousal presses against her core and she cements the connection by grabbing his buttock and pulling him against her. He smells so sweet. He feels so good. All her synapses are alight with warmth and love. So happy is she to be cocooning in his arms that she never wants this moment to end. But desire soon compels her to bring her head back and she sighs as his fingers trace the features of her face. She allows his thumb to gradually slip inside her mouth and she sucks it tenderly, keeping her eyes closed. Soon, his thumb is replaced by his mouth and he kisses her deeply, thoroughly, as little jolts of pleasure play on her skin and beneath it. When his tongue finds hers she quivers as the unexpected sensation echoes in her nipples and between her thighs and he increases the effect by moving his hand from her face to her breast and stroking back down to pleasure her. She can't prevent the moan that escapes her lips, nor can she resist the impulse to turn on her back and welcome him between her legs. He shifts, settling between her open thighs and when he presses his arousal against her warmth she spreads her legs wider to give him greater access. She twines her arms around his shoulders and as she stares into the blue orbs she loves so well the unearthly connection between them starts to crackle and hum. They sink into a drunkenness of kissing. Sucking. For a long, long time. Just tongues, eyes closed. Moving against one another. Preparing one another. 

When he finds his way inside her, she emits a soft exhalation of surprised pleasure that ghosts past his cheek. He waits for a moment, giving her body a chance to get used to him before reaching between their bodies to stroke the bundle of nerves between her legs, trying to provoke the arousal that will ease his way. Last night had been easier because she'd been aroused longer. This morning reminds him of the way had been when they were first together: though she'd become conditioned to receiving him easily, that had only been later; in the beginning, he'd had to work. He concentrates now on getting her body to accept him, using shallow, gentle rocking motions until she begins to subtly move with him, her body moving in a long, slow undulation as he moves his hips, retreating a small distance before thrusting slowly back inside her. His only focus is on bringing her pleasure and readying her for what’s to come.

She thrills at the way he masters her body. Every move he makes is designed to bring her maximum pleasure and to evoke maximum emotional and physical response. She knows he's holding back now, trying to coax her flesh into opening to him fully because he won't be satisfied until he's in so deep she can feel him in her throat. She wants that. She needs that. So, she tries to relax, tries to make room for him, for the wild animal in him that is lurking just below the surface. She can see from his intense, focused expression that it's fighting to get out, but she also knows he won't let it until she's completely open to him. He’s priming her now, reshaping her, bending her to his needs and she loves it. Will is unlike any other man of her acquaintance; other men may be brilliant at coding or economics or semiotics but their brilliance acts as a testosterone blocker. As animals, they’ve been disabled. Will is, first and foremost, a man. A magnificent animal. He wants her body's complete surrender to him and he will stop at nothing to get it. 

He climbs the incline, a slow, steady locomotive heading toward the mountain peak. His motions are deliberate and measured, almost workmanlike: the driving of a piston into a cylinder rhythmically, mechanically. She turns her head and his lips touch hers, a long, tender touch as he moves within her, slowly, as if he has all day to make love to her. He coordinates the movements of his fingertips with his thrusts and though she can feel herself beginning to open to him, it's not enough, not yet, so he urges her to relax, to let him in: " _Just a little more, honey, almost there, almost there_ ," he murmurs, fighting to keep himself under good regulation as the heady sensation of being encased in her wet heat threatens to overwhelm him. " _Relax._ _That's it. That's it_ _._ _So good_. _You feel so good._ _I love you, I love you_." She's terrifyingly full, so full she wonders how she ever took him on a regular basis. She fights the urge to tense up, forcing herself to concentrate only on his voice and the extraordinary pleasure of having him inside her. He's a maestro conducting a symphony: steady strokes. Deep strokes. His fingers caressing her nub. Her body opening to him. Reshaping to fit him. Her hips rising. Her helpless moans of pleasure. She feels as if she’s suffering from delirium and that she might be on the brink of succumbing to a swoon. Nothing could have prepared her for the fiery tumult of emotions that courses through her—uncertainty and fear and dread laced with pure exhilaration. Being with him is electrifying: the hotness. The frenzy. The sucking of the fingers. The inarticulate cries of joy.

Although she wants to beg him to move faster, harder, the biggest part wants him to prolong their loving as long as possible. In the end however, it’s too much for her and she wraps her legs around his waist and moves wildly against him until the tight coil of heat in her core explodes. She can't hold back a tiny cry as wave after wave of sensation washes over her and she doesn't even try to check the tears that well up in her eyes, so overwhelmed is she with love and pleasure. It’s so exquisite she feels it would be impossible to reach greater heights but then comes the second beat and a second wave that falls over the first. 

Her cries of fulfillment and release echo in his body and he begins to lose control, his movements losing their precision, becoming jerky and desperate. She's open to him now, fully able to accept him now, so he plunges into her hard, making her shriek with surprise and pleasure. He bends his head and sucks the tip of her breast into his mouth as he thrusts sharply into her depths once more and MacKenzie cries out in bliss. Such a man. Such a glorious, perfect man. No drug could be more potent. 

Blood pounds in his veins and in his ears so that he can scarcely hear himself grunting "love you, love you, love you" in time with his thrusts and she clutches his shoulders, trying to hang on as he rushes toward the pinnacle, his hips flexing in a staccato motion as he frantically ruts into her, compelled by an ancient, almost violent impulse to inject his essence into her as deeply as he can, to claim her, to mark her, to dispel all doubt among any who would come between them that she belongs to him. And then he's convulsing, crying out her name and crushing his lips to hers as he grunts his release. Lips locked and frozen with ecstasy, they cling to one another as he pulses within her. He gives her everything he has and she receives it joyfully. Reverently. With all the respect that must be accorded a symbiosis that seems to transcend this realm. It’s a rupture. A blood cell burst with joy.

And then … dissolution.

He collapses atop her. 

She doesn’t want to think about the world that awaits them when they leave this bed, so she tries to focus only on this instant. He has sucked her life into his body as she has sucked his. She feels alive. Vital. Abundant. Utterly complete and utterly fulfilled. Because she _loves_ him. She loves the sweat on his brow, the weight of his body pressing her down into the mattress and the harsh exhalation of breath in her ear as he murmurs over and over again that he loves her.

Eventually, he finds the strength to lift his head and she captures his lips again because even now, joined, she simply can't get close enough to him quench her thirst. A current of pure love runs through his body like a river, flowing through him as he frames her face with his hands and kisses her thoroughly. But soon he begins to worry about being too heavy for her, so he tries to ease from her pliant body and she captures him with her legs. "Not yet," she murmurs, running her fingers down his back. "Stay."

She's nearly undone by the beauty of whatever it is that's between them and then she _is_ undone: by a grief that threatens to swallow her whole.

She blinks rapidly, trying to keep her tears in check even as she tries to express what's in her heart. "Do you have any idea how much I love you, Will? Any at all?" she whispers.

"I do. And I feel exactly the same way." The tears spill over her eyelashes then and he uses his finger to brush them away. "Hey," he says gently, stroking her hair. "Don't cry, honey, please don't cry. Try not to think about it, okay? We have now and we have each other. And I am so grateful for that, Mac," he murmurs, even as tears prick at his own eyes. "I'm so unbelievably grateful we have what we have. So, let's make the most of it, okay? No tears. Just love. Just love."

She nods, sniffling, and he kisses first one eyelid and then the other. And then he presses his mouth against hers once more. They spend long moments kissing, only coming up for air when her stomach rumbles.

“Let’s get you some food," he says. "Do you want to go out?” 

She strokes his hair back from his forehead. “No," she answers. "I don’t want to share you. I’ll make us some eggs and coffee. Sound good?”

He nods. “Yeah. I’ll help.”

“Okay.”

She gives him one last lingering kiss, reluctantly turns away from him and swings her legs over the side of the bed. He walks around to her side and when she stands up, fatigue, fear and the activities of last night and this morning make her wobble a bit and then his arm is around her, steadying her.

"You okay?" he asks.

"Yes," she replies. "Just ... tired."

He pulls her into his body. "Maybe you can have a nap after breakfast."

She shakes her head. She doesn't want to waste a moment with him. "I'll be fine. Thanks."

After their morning ablutions, they make their way to the kitchen, the weight of uncertainty infusing everything like a black cloud.

She takes the eggs, butter and sour cream out of the fridge and hands them to him and as he sets them on the counter, she pulls a measuring cup in which to mix the ingredients down from the shelf. He grabs a couple of eggs and is just about to crack them open when something occurs to him. Something he'd conveniently ignored last night and this morning—in service perhaps—to the primitive urgings of a dying body.

“Mac …” he says, putting his hand on her arm. 

She finishes adding the coffee to the coffee filter and turns to him.

“What?”

“About last night … and just now.”

“What about it?”

He rubs his face. “Are you on ... ?" He lets the words hang there. He's pretty sure she knows what he means.

Of course, she does. And she’s not completely surprised he’s asking because under normal circumstances Will is nothing if not fastidious (which is why she isn’t worried about STDs). That being said, these aren’t normal circumstances and she’d been both surprised and relieved he hadn’t raised the subject. Still, she's not sorry she didn’t bring it up and she won’t apologize for it because it's what she wants and she's not ashamed of it. If he was so worried about it, he should have asked.

She shakes her head. “No.”

He nearly drops the eggs in his hand. “ _No?_ ”

“No.”

“What about …” She looks at him knowingly but refuses to bite. _Jesus. Are you going to make me say his name?_ “…Martin?”

“There was no need.”

He looks at her blankly.

“We haven't been dating that long, Will. We hadn’t gotten that far.”

He sighs with relief. Which quickly turns to dismay when he realizes they could have … she could be … _Fuck, fuck, fuck._

“So you could be … we could have …”

“Yes.”

“And it didn’t occur to you to mention it because …?”

“Really, Will?”

“I _assumed_ …” Well, _assumed_ or _wanted to assume_.

“In matters such as these, I believe the customary apportionment of responsibility between partners is fifty percent.”

“You wanted to get pregnant. Or wouldn’t mind.”

She nods.

“Dare I ask why? Under the circumstances, I mean?”

“Does it matter? What’s done is done.”

She turns back to the coffee maker and he puts the eggs down and puts his hand on her back to get her attention. She turns to face him once more, her expression defiant.

“Yes,” he tells her. “It _matters_. A kid needs a father.”

“We don’t know he won’t have one.”

“No … but we do know the odds are he won’t.”

“I refuse to let—“

“ _… reality?_ ” he interrupts.

“… _fear_ … dictate my choices.”

He admits that all that mattered to him in those moments was fulfilling his biological imperative (imaginary pharmaceuticals be damned), but it was wrong. Irrational.

“I get it, and I accept my share of the blame, but what we did—it was selfish, Mac. We were thinking of ourselves and what _we_ wanted. Not what’s best for a kid.”

“I’ll give it a good home, Will,” she says. “With …” she swallows. “… or without you.”

_Ouch._

Putting aside the fact that the kid wouldn’t have a father, he doesn’t doubt it: she’ll be the best mother who ever lived. But …

Oh, what the hell is he thinking? She’s right: as far as what they _did_ is concerned, it doesn’t matter: if the kid exists, the kid exists. But as far as what they _will do_ is concerned, well … that’s another story.

He sighs. “Fine. But it’s not happening again.”

“What’s not? The sex or the unprotected sex?”

A tumult of emotions washes over him. Last night and this morning had been a welcome reprieve, but the full weight of this nightmare is once again upon him. He knows he was a dick to do it again just now in light of what he's about to say to her, but his rational self is now in charge and it would simply be wrong to take her down with him. But that doesn’t mean he has to look her in the eye when he tells her.

He looks down. “Either."

She freezes. _Are you kidding me?_ “So … what we just did. That was ... what? A goodbye shag?”

He forces himself to lift his gaze to hers. “Of course not," he sighs. "But I'm sick, Mac. And my days are probably numbered. It sucks, but that’s where we are.”

“So, what’s your plan? You fly home tomorrow and I never see you again?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have a road map.”

"Well, I do. I'm not letting you go again, Will. I won't. And it _is_ going to happen again. And again, and again and again until you can’t do it anymore. _That’s_ where we are. So, you’d better get used to it.”

He puts both hands on her forearms. “Mac. You _know_ …” He pauses over the growing lump in his throat. “… you _know_ I love you. And I don’t want to let you go, either. In fact, if things were different, I'd ...”

 _Crap. Here we go again._ _Do_ _I tell her everything?_ What’s the rule again? He’s having a hard time keeping up. She was pissed when he'd divulged part of his plans last night, but then seemed to change her mind. _Then again, she did say she wanted to know everything, so maybe …what should I do?_

“You’d what?”

He sighs. “Do you really want to know? Everything I was planning to do before I found out? Think it over carefully before you answer.”

She doesn't have to. Although she'd been angry last night it had had more to do with her own feelings of powerlessness than his revelations. Her original statement still stands: she wants to know everything.

“Yes. I want to know.”

“Okay,” he sighs. “Okay." He exhales softly. "If things were different, I would have asked you to marry me.” And God, he wishes things were different because being with her now, in the only way that matters, has shown him what a complete idiot he's been. 

Despite the precariousness of their situation, happiness surges through her. “You were planning to propose?”

“Yep. I had a speech and the ring, but now I can’t give you either because I have nothing to offer you. Less than nothing, in fact. Because being with me would put you in the hole.”

“But that’s my decision, isn’t it?”

He stares at her, sincerely puzzled. _What are you saying? Are you saying you WANT me to pretend we have a future together?_

“Are you saying …?”

“Yes.”

“MacKenzie, I am—"

“I _know_. But I love you. And if this is all the time we have, I’m not going to waste it.”

“Sweetheart, you need to understand something. The end, when it comes, is brutal,” he says quietly, looking down. He looks up at her again, gazing at her intently. “You can’t remember who you are or who you love. And I don’t know if I want you to see me like that. No, I do know. I _don’t_ want you to see me like that. I don’t want you to _remember_ me like that.”

“You’d rather face this alone.”

“’Rather’ is the wrong word. If I thought …” he swallows. “If I thought it wouldn’t hurt you … maybe. But it will. It will hurt you, it will be terrible for you to watch and it will taint your memories of me and our life together. Nothing good can come from you watching me turn into a fucking vegetable, Mac. Nothing.”

She marvels at his lack of comprehension. She will take whatever she can have of him for as long as she can have it. That’s it. End of story. “If the worst _does_ happen, it will ease my mind to know that I did everything within my power to help you and love you and ease your way through it. That’s the good that will come from it, Will. You’ll still be you, and I _love_ you."

“That’s the thing, Mac. I _won’t_ be me. I’ll look like me, but the real me, the me I am today, will be gone. It’ll just be my body.”

“You’ll still be _you_ , Will,” she says impatiently. “Even if it’s only what’s left of you. It will be part of your journey and I want to be there.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you. As I have loved every incarnation of you: the loving boyfriend, the man who ignored me for three years, the angry, vengeful ass, and the man you are now. And if you become a hollowed-out shell, I will love you then, too. Because I love _you_. No matter where you are on your road.” She takes his hands. “You’re going on a journey, Will. It’s going to be the biggest fight of your life. Wouldn’t you rather have someone who loves you to walk beside you?”

He shakes his head. “Not if it means taking you down with me.”

“If the roles were reversed, would you abandon me to the fates?”

“I did.”

“You didn’t leave until you knew I was going to be alright.”

He looks down.

“Look at me,” she tells him, and he obeys. “If _I_ was the one who had gotten the rotten test results … what would you do? Would you send me off to face this alone?”

“No,” he says reluctantly.

“Why?”

“Because I love you and I would do everything within my power to help you.”

“Then how could you possibly think it would it be any different for me? I want to marry you, Will. Say yes.”

“Mac, think this through. Won’t it just make things worse down the road … if … when … the inevitable happens?”

“I don’t think that’s the way this works. If we don’t do this, if we don’t take our shot at happiness while we still can, I’m going to regret it for the rest of my life.”

He tries again. Maybe the nightmare logistics will make an impression on her. “We live in two different countries. Even if I wasn’t … you know … how’s this going to work?”

“Didn’t you think of that before you showed up here?”

“Yes. But I was planning to offer to move here then. I’m pretty sure that’s no longer a possibility.”

“You were willing to give up _News Night_?”

He nods.

“Why?”

“Because I’d be gaining something far more precious.”

Now that makes her feel better. However fleetingly. She makes her decision then. “My try-out period is almost over. They said they want to keep me on, but I haven’t signed anything. I’ll come back to New York. Find something there.”

His response is out before he has a chance to think better of it. “You can come back to _News Night_. ACN’s building a show around Sloan and Charlie said they’ll give it to Jim if you want to come back.”

“He knew you were planning to propose?”

“Yeah. He was thrilled. Told me it was about time I pulled my head out of my ass.”

She smiles. “Does he know? About your test results?

He shakes his head. “Not yet. I figured I’d talk to the oncologist first. Find out what’s ahead of me.”

“I guess it’s settled, then. I’ll come back, we’ll get you started with the treatment and take it from there. One day at a time.”

He tries again. “MacKenzie, surely you want to take some time to think this over. Talk to your family. Talk to your boss.”

She shakes her head. “I’m going to say this once and we are never going to discuss it again. I don’t have a choice, Will. I have never been able to forget what it was like for us. It _tortures_ me. And if I have the chance to have that back again, even if it’s only for a little while, I’m going to take it. And neither you nor anyone else is going to stop me.” And that’s the crux of it: she could no more turn away her chance at happiness than she could deny herself oxygen.

He stares at her. What the fuck is he supposed to do here? On the one hand, this is a woman who’s always known her own mind and under any other circumstances it would be ludicrous to try to deny her her agency. But these circumstances are horrendous. Can he really be that selfish? Because that’s what it would be: selfish. And he’s pretty sure any rational outsider would see it that way.

He decides to put her off. Maybe the oncologist can talk her out of it. He intends to ask the most awful questions about what his future may look like to ensure that she does. “We can talk about it after we see the oncologist. And if you still want to …”

She can feel the window of opportunity between them starting to close and she can’t let that happen. “No. I’ve already decided. Did you bring the ring with you?”

He sighs. “Yeah. I was going to give it to you. To sell.”

“Where is it?”

“In my briefcase.”

She’d like to hear his speech, but there’s no time. Not when he’s about to throw up barriers between them. She extends her ring finger. “Will you get it?”

“Mac …”

“Please.”

He goes to his briefcase, gets out the blue Tiffany box and opens it. The thought of doing this makes him sick, but if it’s what she wants … if it’s what she really wants … fuck.

He walks to where she’s standing and tries to open his mouth to deliver his speech but in the end, he just can’t because he feels like she’s making him torture her, she’s _making_ him ruin her life. He tries one more time.

“Mac, think about what you’re doing. _Please_. I know you love me and I’m grateful you want to help me. But I can hire nurses for that. And you can love me and check in on me from afar. _Without ruining your life_ _._ ”

“You think being with you will ruin my life?”

“The me I am now? No. But the me I’m going to become in a matter of months? Absolutely.”

She shakes her head. “I want this, Billy. I want you. For as long as I can have you. And I don’t want it to be from afar. I want to wake up with you every morning and go to bed with you every night. I want to be able hold you and kiss you and love you and I won’t be able to do that from here. I _need_ this, Will. I need you. Don’t deny me.”

 _Fuck._ What is he supposed to do? _If it’s what she wants … if it’s what she really wants …_

“Okay.” Defeated, he gets down on one knee, holds the ring up and tries to open his mouth to speak, but he can’t get the words out. In the end, he can only shake his head. But she knows exactly what’s in his mind and in his heart, so she reaches out to stroke his hair.

“I know. I _know_.”

He takes hold of her ring finger and slips the ring on then lifts the back of her hand to his lips and kisses it. Then he stands up and enfolds her in his arms.

“Thank you,” he whispers in her ear as he holds her tightly. “For wanting to help me. I’ll try to make this as easy on you as I can, Mac. I promise.”

“Stop it. You just worry about you. I can take care of myself.”

“Okay,” he says, kissing her with feeling. “Okay,” he murmurs. They stand there, swaying softly.

A thought flutters to the surface. Charlie. Something about Charlie … he’s supposed to do something for Charlie. What? He can’t remember. _Jesus, is it happening already?_ And then he remembers. He was supposed to call him yesterday. Will looks at his watch. It’s ten AM in London, which means it’s five AM in New York. He'll call him anyway; Charlie has been getting up at four AM for more than sixty years—even on weekends. His morning ritual—of making coffee, reading the newspaper and baking something for breakfast before the rest of the family gets up—requires it.

Will kisses her softly. “I just remembered I was supposed to call Charlie. Can we put off making breakfast 'til I do?"

She nods.

"Okay, I'll be right back.”

“Okay,” she says. Though she’s loath to let him out of her arms, she does. She watches his graceful form lope into the living room and it sickens her to think that one day, in the not-so-distant future, he might not be able to do that. He might not be able to hold her in his arms or make love to her passionately as he just did. Despite her bravado of a few minutes ago, her mind is overrun with warring thoughts. What has she done? Will she be strong enough to watch him disappear? How will she bear it? And will there be anything left of her—after—if she does? The answer comes to her as she watches him open his briefcase and rummage around inside. She will bear it because she must. She blinks back tears even as she makes a promise to herself. She’ll take it one day at a time, one calamity at a time. Surely, she can bear that.

He locates his phone and brings it to his ear only to discover the battery is dead. Crap. He brought his charger … didn’t he? He rummages around in his bag for a few seconds as he tries to remember. He meant to bring it, but did he? He’d been running late, and Maggie had asked him a question and he’d been thinking about MacKenzie and dying and he wasn’t at all focused on what the hell he was supposed to be doing. Maybe he didn’t? A more thorough examination of his bag confirms it. “Fuck,” he swears.

“What’s wrong?” MacKenzie calls from the kitchen.

“My battery’s dead and I left the charger in my office. You don’t happen to remember the number we call for voicemail, do you?” He couldn’t remember the number before he started losing his marbles. He’ll never remember it now.

“No, but I’ve got a charger that might work. I accidentally took it with me. I kept meaning to mail it back but haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

“Thank God you’re a kleptomaniac,” he says, relieved. She goes to her desk, locates the charger and hands it to him.

He plugs the phone in, waits a minute and sees he’s got a voicemail message. He’ll listen to that one first, then call Charlie. He hits the Call voicemail button. _“You have twenty-seven unheard messages.”_

 _What the hell? Twenty-seven?_ Hardly anyone has this number, so why would there be so many? Shit. Did something happen? Something newsworthy? He’d better turn on the TV. He’s standing right in front of one, but it’s one of those newfangled jobbies in which design apparently outweighed function: the power button is nowhere to be found. He longs for the days of rabbit ears and televisions you had to turn on by flipping a switch. At least how to operate them was intuitive then. You flipped a switch, it turned on, and bingo: you were in business. Everything made sense. Not like now, when everything is so fucking complicated. When nothing is obvious and meaning can only be divined circuitously. Nothing makes sense now. Not technology, not women who want to marry him even though he’s got one foot in the grave, and not the fact that he’s _dying_. Jesus.

“Mac, how the hell do you turn on this TV?”

“The remote’s right there. On the windowsill.”

He rolls his eyes. Has it never occurred to her that leaving electronics in direct sunlight might not be the best strategy? They’re definitely going to have to have a talk about that before she moves in. His hand stills on the remote. She’s moving in. What the hell was he thinking, allowing himself to be infected by her madness? Then again, she’s got his ring on her finger now; is he really going to tell her to take it off?

He turns on the TV, hits mute and starts flipping through the channels. Nothing obvious is going on, no pictures of burning buildings or breaking news chyrons.

He presses 1 on the phone.

“First unheard message. Sent Thursday, 9:17 PM (has he really not checked his voicemail in over 24 hours?): _Will, Wardrobe is wondering where you left_ …” He presses 5 to skip to the next message because any message involving Maggie and his clothes can wait.

“Next saved message. Sent Thursday at 9:45 PM: _Hi Will, it’s Maggie again._ _Wardrobe says .._.” He presses 5 to skip.

On and on it goes. There are three more calls from Maggie because in his haste to get home and pack he accidentally took three accessories Elliot was going to use for the show last night. Oh well. He’s sure they muddled through somehow. Things only start to get interesting when he gets to message 6. “Next saved message. Sent Friday at 10:45 AM: _Will, this is Dr. Rhodes…”_

Shit. The man who ruined his life three days ago.

 _“… Can you call me back as soon as possible? My number is .._.” He’s not going to wake up Dr. Rhodes or his family, so he might as well listen to the rest of the messages. Maybe the man will tell him why he wants him to call. He’s had enough surprises this week from Dr. Rhodes.

“Next saved message. Sent Friday at 11:10 AM: _Hi Will, Dr. Rhodes again. I guess you didn’t get my message. Please call me back as soon as you get this. It’s important. Here’s my number again.._.”

Dr. Rhodes calls him not one, not two, but nineteen more times, leaving his cell number, his home number, and even his daughter’s cell phone number (he has to take her to a dance), but in not a single one of those calls does he get to the fucking point.

As he listens, Will looks around for a pen and a piece of paper but can’t find either in his briefcase or on any surface nearby. He’s tethered to the goddamned charger cord and since he can barely remember his own name these days he can’t hang up and start over because he’ll never be able to remember whether Dr. Rhodes’ daughter’s cell phone number was in message eleven or 15. He just hopes Dr. Rhodes will repeat it.

He needs MacKenzie’s help. Fast. “Mac,” he calls. “Can you please hand me a pen and a piece of paper?”

“Sure.” She turns off the water in the kitchen, wipes her hands on her legs and retrieves both from her desk. She walks over to where he’s sitting and hands it to him.

“Thanks,” he mouths reflexively, though why he does is a mystery to him since no one on the other end can hear him.

“Everything okay?” she asks. He nods and points to the phone, trying to indicate that while he loves her dearly, he can’t talk to her and listen at the same time so can she please shut the hell up? She takes the hint and goes to finish breakfast.

Will’s hand has a cramp and so does the finger he keeps using to click through to the next message but just as he’s despairing of ever getting to message twenty-seven the dulcet tones of the electronic announcer click in: “You have no more new messages.”

_Thank God._

He hangs up, sets the phone on the table and walks to the dining area where MacKenzie is setting the table.

“Everything alright?” she asks. He nods. No need to worry her until he has to. “Did you get everything squared away with Charlie?”

 _Charlie. Crap. Oh, fuck it_. He’ll call him after his hand no longer feels like a claw.

“I’ll call him later. What can I do to help?” he asks, motioning to the kitchen.

“You can make the eggs,” she tells him. He goes into the kitchen and she realizes she can’t stop staring at him. Never in her wildest dreams (well, okay, maybe her _wildest_ ones) did she think she’d see Will McAvoy standing in her kitchen. _Dying_ in her kitchen. God, she has to stop thinking that!

There's little for her to do except butter the toast and pour the coffee so she does that and goes to stand beside him at the stove. He puts his arm around her, draws her near and kisses the top of her head and all she can think is that it feels so _good_ to be so close to him. Wonderful. As if everything (except that one hideous fact of their lives) is as it should be. He adds the cold pat of butter to the pan and a spoonful of sour cream when the eggs start to curdle. She watches as he expertly scrambles them to perfection and when the eggs are soft, moist and fluffy, he divides the steaming food between two plates and delivers them to the table.

As he sets her plate in front of her he can't resist bending down to kiss her lips. He lingers there for a second, breathing her in, and kisses her a second time before tearing himself away long enough to go and sit across from her. Breakfast is eaten mostly in silence, each of them lost in their own thoughts. His eyes linger on her face as he pushes his plate away and he idly wonders what it’s going to be like when he no longer knows who she is. Will he think she’s a kindly stranger? Will he be afraid of her? He supposes that’s a possibility, right? Who knows what cockamamie stories one’s brain might cook up when it’s disintegrating? And what about her? What will it be like for her to serve him his breakfast? Will he be able to feed himself? Will he drool? Oh God, the indignity of it all. And she’ll have to witness it.

Maybe it’s just vanity but he doesn’t want her to see him that way. If he’s going to be playing a role in anyone’s memories, let it be as the man he is now, not the shell he’s to become. What the hell is he going to do about it? He’s going to have to take the oncologist aside and tell her to lay it on as thickly as she possibly can. To outline the absolute worst-case scenario. Maybe then MacKenzie will come to her senses.

At that moment his cell phone rings. Dr. Rhodes, no doubt. Will’s heart starts pounding in his chest as he gets up and heads to the living room. He looks around, trying to figure out where he can go to get some privacy in case the news is even worse than it already is and he’s relieved to discover that MacKenzie has a balcony. Perfect. Until he remembers that his phone is still practically dead and will likely die on him as soon as he unplugs it from the charger. Fuck. He sits down on the couch and doesn’t look at MacKenzie though he can feel her staring at him.

“Will McAvoy,” he says into the phone.

“Will!” The man on the other end of the line sounds relieved and … nervous. “It’s Dr. Rhodes. I don’t know if you got my other messages, but—“

“I did, but not until just now. Sorry. The battery on my phone died and I just plugged it back in.”

“I understand. Um, good. Good.” He waits a beat. “Listen. I have some news. I wasn’t permitted to leave it in a voicemail, but uh … is this a good time to talk? Are you alone? If so, are you sitting down?”

Will’s heart starts pounding even louder. “My …uh …” _fiancée? That’s what she is, now, isn’t she? Weird._ “… fiancée is with me and I’m sitting down, yes.”

MacKenzie is still sitting at the table and her head jerks up at Will’s words. She’s on her feet in an instant and heading toward him. Her movements register in his peripheral vision and he tracks her progress as if in slow motion. She knows him better than anyone in the world and she can feel his unease, can feel the fear that’s oozing from his pores and rippling across the room toward her. He tries to turn away and to look anywhere but at her (if he’s about to be told he’s going to drop dead in a month instead of a year he doesn’t need a witness—not even her), but she comes to sit on the couch beside him, right in his direct line of vision. She puts her hand on his knee—in solidarity, he supposes—though she has no idea who’s on the phone.

“Who is it?” she mouths. He shakes his head. Will is so distracted by anxiety and MacKenzie’s presence that he doesn’t hear what Dr. Rhodes is saying.

“Uh, what did you say?” he says. And now the line is breaking up. “Dr. Rhodes? I can’t hear you. You’re breaking up.”

 _Dr. Rhodes_ , MacKenzie thinks. _That’s the name on your test results_. Her heart goes into her throat and she squeezes Will’s thigh. Dr. Rhodes is calling from New York before dawn on a Saturday. _Oh my God, what’s wrong?_

“The lab made a mistake,” Will thinks he hears Dr. Rhodes say, but he’s breaking up so he can’t be entirely sure. _A mistake?_

“What kind of mistake?” Will blurts out and his heart is thudding so wildly he’s sure Dr. Rhodes will be able to hear it in New York.

MacKenzie’s eyes grow wide and her own heart joins the cacophony of sound coming from Will’s chest.

“… the wrong test results …”

“You’re breaking up, I can’t hear you!” _Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God …_

“… new technician … someone else’s … so sorry … sorry …”

“Are you saying they gave me someone else’s fucking _test_ results?!” Will shouts into the phone.

“Yes … yes … sorry …so sorry …”

He looks at MacKenzie and her eyes are now three times too big for her head and her hands are clapped over her mouth.

Will can’t hear a goddamned thing so he pulls the phone from his ear (thereby disconnecting it from the charger cable which he will come to regret bitterly in a couple of minutes). He shakes the phone in frustration until MacKenzie yanks it from his hand and raises it to her ear. All she can hear is static punctuated by a few “ _sorries_.”

“Call him back!” she shouts into the phone. “Call him back! _Please!_ ”

The line goes dead. “He gave you the wrong _test results_?!” MacKenzie exclaims.

“I think that’s what he said, but I don’t know, and I don’t know what it means if he did.” He looks around for the piece of paper. Should he call the man’s cell phone number? His home number? His daughter’s cell phone number?

He finds the paper and MacKenzie looks at it. “Give him a minute to call back, Will.”

They sit there staring at each other, waiting for the other shoe to drop. She grips his hand so tightly he can feel the claw coming back but he doesn’t try to get her to relinquish it. Her presence is steadying and soothing, a tether to a world that’s gone mad.

“It’s going to be okay, Billy,” she tells him. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be okay. You’re not alone. I’m here.” He nods in gratitude because she has always, _always_ looked out for him, even when he didn’t deserve it. “Do you want me to talk to him?” she says. He nods because he thinks he may not have the fortitude just now to deal with whatever this means. She’ll know what to do. She always does.

The phone rings again and this time she picks it up and puts it on speaker so Will can hear the conversation. “Will McAvoy’s phone.”

“This is Dr. Rhodes. Is Will there?”

“I’m his fiancée. Will’s a little shaken up … he’s right here but he asked me to talk to you on his behalf.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t disclose confidential information about a patient to …”

MacKenzie drops Will’s hand and gets to her feet. “Now, you listen to me. If you gave him the wrong test results I think you’ve got a bigger problem on your hands than breaching doctor-patient privilege. Is that what you told him?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. The lab screwed up – “

She interrupts him. “What does that mean exactly?” She can’t keep her voice from cracking, and she cannot keep the little bud of hope that’s blooming in her chest at bay. “Does he or does he not have a life-threatening illness?” She speaks slowly, as if to a child, enunciating every syllable.

She holds her breath as she waits for the man on the other end of the line to decide their fate.

“He does not.”

_He does not. He does not. He does NOT!_

“Oh my God!” she shrieks. “Billy! Billy!”

She drops the phone and launches herself into Will’s arms and Will can’t believe it, can hardly believe it, can hardly dare believe it. _Can it be true? Can it possibly be true?_ But he can’t ask Dr. Rhodes because she dropped the phone and she won’t let him move because she’s too busy kissing every bit of his face, every bit of skin she can touch. She can hardly breathe only this time it’s from a cataclysm of joy.

Will tries to get her to focus. “Honey, honey, the phone, he’s still on the phone. Where is it?”

“I think it fell …” but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except getting as close to him as she can. “Oh God, Billy. You’re okay,” she cries, clutching his shirt as she kisses his cheeks, his eyes, his ears, his nose, his lips and back to his nose again. “You’re okay, you’re okay, thank God, thank God, thank God …” It’s an incantation and he knows from experience she’s about to blast off to the other side of the universe and if that happens he’s not going to be able to get through to her.

“Honey,” he says, trying to get her attention. “Honey, take it easy _._ ”

But she can’t, she can’t, she can’t, because he’s _not_ dying and their lives _aren’t_ over and she’s got him back again and they’re going to be married and the black cloud that has been hanging over their heads for the last dozen hours has precisely, miraculously, beautifully lifted and the morning sun that’s streaming through her window is shining down on them and he loves her, he loves her, he _loves_ her and she loves him and yes, and yes, and _yes!_

“MacKenzie!” Will says, trying to get her to stop kissing him long enough to find the fucking phone. The impatience in his voice is an emergency broadcast that cuts right through her giddiness and she jerks her attention back to him. “What?”

“The phone. You dropped it and Dr. Rhodes is still _on the line_.”

“Oh,” she says, trying to pull herself together. 

Will digs down into the couch cushions next to his hip. “Check the other side. Is it there?”

She looks around the couch. “No.”

For some reason she’s still moored to his lap, apparently oblivious to the fact that she needs to get off his legs if they’re to have any hope of finding his phone.

“Honey, I love you, but you need to get up so we can find it.”

She scoots off his legs and onto the couch.

“Where did you drop it?” he asks.

“It’s got to be around here somewhere.”

“You think?”

“No need to be a smartass, Will.”

Grumbling, he gets down on his hands and knees and searches under the couch. “Aha,” he mutters when his fingers nudge the phone, MacKenzie having kicked it there as she launched herself at him. He fishes it out and holds it up, victorious as he plops back down next to her on the couch.

“Do you want me to talk to him?” she offers.

He raises his eyebrows at her. “I think I’d better.”

“Maybe,” she agrees. 

He brings the phone up and puts it to his ear. “Sorry about that. We’re back now. So you’re saying I _don’t_ have a tumor. I _don’t_ have cancer. Is that right?”

“Yes. I’m so –“

Will cuts him off. “Does that mean there’s nothing wrong with me? That I’m _fine_?”

“Other than elevated cholesterol levels, yes. I’m so sorry, Will. I’m _so_ sorry. Tell your fiancée that, will you?”

Will could be pissed, he could try to find out if he could file a lawsuit against the lab or the doctor or both (the reason Dr. Rhodes didn’t want to leave a voicemail message in which he admitted the error is suddenly abundantly clear), he could do any number of things, but in the end it just doesn’t fucking matter because he _isn’t_ dying and MacKenzie is in his arms and he’s got his whole, non-abbreviated life ahead of him. His thoughts echo MacKenzie’s words: _Thank God_. “Hey, mistakes happen. Do I need to cancel my appointment with Dr. Ross, or have you already called her?”

“I already called her.” He’s silent for a moment. “Again, Will, I am so sorry. I can only imagine what you and your fiancée have been through in the last couple of days.”

“Like I said. Don’t worry about it.” Will pauses. “Thanks for calling.”

“Take care.”

He hangs up and turns to MacKenzie, who’s watching him with wide eyes. “It’s true, right? You’re okay?”

He nods.

“Oh my God,” she breathes. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.” She falls forward into his chest and he rubs her back for a few moments. Soon, she pulls back to look at him.

“So this changes everything and nothing, right? I come back to New York, to _News Night_ , we move in together, get married and live happily ever after?”

He smiles. “Sounds like a plan… unless you’ve changed your mind … now that you know you’ll be stuck with me for forty years instead of one.”

She loops her arms around his neck and kisses him. “Not a chance, Will. Not a chance.”

\---

_The next morning_

She awakens to the sensation of his kisses on her neck, his fingers skating down her arm.

“Am I in a dream or is this real?” she asks him.

“Dreams this sweet never come true for me,” he answers. “It must be real.”

She lifts her arms to wind them around his neck and he brings his lips to hers. As they kiss, she forgets everything except the strength of his arms, the tenderness of his touch and the way her heart beats faster, threatening to leap out of her chest.

 _Perfect, perfect, you're perfect_ , she thinks. She never wants to leave his arms. Which turns out to be a problem.

It’s upon her again: the desire to be soldered to his side. They go to the farmer’s market to buy some things for dinner and she doesn’t once let go of his hand. It doesn’t seem to bother him; indeed, he seems to be suffering from a similar affliction (though his is of the kissing and hugging variety). At every stop along the way he pulls her into his side to kiss her or nuzzle her ear or express his profound gratitude for her willingness to upend her life for him. He simply can’t believe his good fortune: he’s not dying and he gets to spend the rest of his life with the woman of his dreams. They’d come so close to losing everything. Gratitude that they hadn’t infuses the air around them and imbues their every thought and feeling.

They spend the rest of the day in bed and when late afternoon comes, she doesn’t want to let him out of her sight. Her stomach is full of knots because he’s packing his small carry-on for this evening’s flight back.

_Please don’t go. Stay. I don’t want to lose a moment with you._

A thought occurs to her then. _What would happen if I just didn’t show up at work tomorrow?_ It wouldn’t leave them in too much of a bind, she assures herself; they have rotating EPs at the ready to cover sick days and funerals. Would it be so bad to resign effective immediately? Of course, it’s not ideal and it wouldn’t look good and they’d likely be pissed, but would it be irreparably bad considering she’s moving permanently to another country? She can’t shake the nagging fear she’s going to lose him and it permeates her every thought. If she goes back with him, he’ll be safe. Their future together will be safe.

She sees one of his t-shirts on the floor next to the couch where he’d tossed it last night during a lust- and love-fueled lovemaking session that had left them both reeling. She picks it up, hands it to him and he tucks it inside his case before closing it.

“I’m coming back with you,” she announces.

His hand stills on the lock as he turns to her.

“What?”

“I’m coming back with you. I’ll clear out my office this afternoon and fax my resignation letter, effective immediately.”

“You can’t do that. They need you. Who’s going to EP the show?”

“They have a stable of substitute EPs. They rotate them in and out so someone can step in at any moment.”

“That’s a terrible idea, MacKenzie. Your reputation will suffer if you don’t give them any notice.”

“I don’t care. I’m afraid, Will … I know it’s ridiculous but I just got you back and I’m afraid something’s going to happen if I let you out of my sight.”

He leans forward and kisses her. “Honey, nothing’s going to happen. We had a bad scare and it’s natural to feel uneasy—I don’t want to leave you, either—but you can’t let fear dictate decisions about your career.”

“I can't help it. It’s all I can feel.”

“Exactly: it’s all you can feel. It’s a feeling, not a fact.”

“We’ve already lost too much time, Will. I want our life together to start now.”

“It already has. It’s only a two-and-a-half weeks, Mac. We’ll see each other next weekend and you’ll be back in New York before you know it.”

“That’s not good enough. I want to go to bed with you every night and wake up with you every morning.”

He sighs. He doesn’t want to leave her, either and just the thought of it makes his stomach clench in protest. Being with her is like breathing fresh air after being stuck in a sooty dungeon and he can’t quite get close enough to her to quench his craving (except when they’re joined). And now he wishes that image, of them being joined, hadn’t just flashed in his mind because now he wants her again. He looks at his watch. Do we have time? Before dinner and the cab? Although his pants have grown uncomfortably tight, he tries to put a lid on it because taking her to bed isn’t going to solve their immediate problem.

But .... maybe the year’s worth of vacation time coming to him will? The more he thinks about it the better the idea sounds. He can think of worse things than having to hold down the fort while she goes to work. At least if he’s here, he can make sure she eats because she’s lost far too much weight these last few years. He can make her breakfast, pack her lunch, and make her dinner. He can help her pack for New York and if there’s any time left over, he can go to the museums. He’s not so readily recognized in this city, so it would be fun to walk around unnoticed. Maybe they can take in musical in the West End. He just has to get Charlie on board.

He kisses her on the nose. “Let me call Charlie. It’s pretty short notice but he did say he’s been wanting to give Sloan and Elliot more exposure. Maybe they can fill in until your notice period is up and we can get you moved out of here.”

Forty minutes later, it’s settled. He hadn't been able to get hold of Charlie yesterday, so Will had to divulge the entire story to him this afternoon—from the test result fiasco to the proposal to MacKenzie’s separation anxiety. In the end, Charlie was too shocked to deny Will's emergency three-week vacation request.

And now they’re relaxing on the couch, their feet intertwined while Will reads his iPad and MacKenzie catches up on the news she’s missed in the 48 hours. She's literally brimming with happiness. Though she can hardly contain it, at least she can finally concentrate on her work. She can feel Will staring at her, so she looks up from her laptop.

“What?” she asks him.

He gives her a long, slow smile. “Nothing. Just admiring my fiancée.”

“Anything in particular?”

“Your hair. And the way you bite your lip when you’re trying to concentrate.”

She closes her laptop, sets it on the table beside her and motions for him to do the same with his tablet. Then she crawls over him (eliciting a few “oomphs” from Will) to lay atop his body. She rests her cheek against his chest and closes her eyes, luxuriating in the sound of his heartbeat, his warmth and his scent. He strokes her back and kisses the top of her head. As he does, a single thought occurs to them both at the same time: “I love you.”

She lifts her head to look at him. He kisses her sweetly and this time, they both say it aloud.

THE END


End file.
